The Gita Pertiwi Foundation undertakes various activities oriented towards empowerment and developing critical attitudes in society (especially women) through environmental issues and social justice, especially in order to anticipate the problem of accelerated development which causes various impacts on the environment and injustice for society, especially for women, children, and other marginalized groups.
Gita Pertiwi’s vision is the realization of a more just and environmentally sustainable social order, which is based on the values of justice, democratic participation, equality, accountability, openness for all society without considering ethnicity, race, class, religion and gender. Its mission is to encourage efforts to reduce exploitation of marginalized groups, especially women, children and other vulnerable groups and environmental destruction.
This social dimension animates Gita Pertiwi’s Regenerative Agriculture program, which takes place in Kemudo Village in Prambanan District (Central Java Province), where the majority of the population work as farmers. Kemudo Village is between Klaten Regency and Yogyakarta City, and what is unique about this village is that it is an industrial area but still has quite large agricultural potential with various commodities, and so far, farmers in Kemudo Village have implemented conventional cultivation.
The Regenerative Agriculture program In Kemudo Village carries out activities that provide assistance to farmers, farm workers, and women’s groups. It implements three planting periods with a rice-rice and vegetables (secondary crop) planting pattern. The rice plants planted follow a varietal rotation system to prevent pest attacks. The secondary crops planted include corn, chilies, eggplant, peanuts, the plants are planted in a multi-crop manner. Meanwhile, other organisms found on land include grasshoppers, worms, caterpillars, bees, butterflies, ladybugs with various types and other animals.
Program activities start from field schools (horticultural cultivation in rice fields and yards), providing assistance on the land, learning about organic fertilizers, practicing organic fertilizer production, making demonstration plots, and encouraging marketing of agricultural products. There is potential for sustainable cultivation by utilizing organic materials found in the village, namely potential husk charcoal and animal waste. Currently, farmers have started implementing sustainable agriculture by exploiting local potential.
The concept of Regenerative Agriculture is agriculture with the principle of improving land quality by rehabilitating and revitalizing entire ecosystems such as land and water. The application of regenerative agriculture principles is carried out by reducing the use of chemical applications that can damage the environment, replacing them with environmentally friendly materials that can be found around the house so that the vegetables produced are healthier to consumers.
With the program, Gita Pertiwi has been able to achieve the following impacts among its study participants, consisting of women and farmers: access to healthy food for the family, improved awareness about the use of organic agricultural production techniques, cost efficiency given production resources are sourced from what is locally available rather than chemical applications, and promotion of agroecology as the necessary link between humans, water, soil, and the environment.
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