IAAS Student Exchange Program at Indmira

In this modern era, there may be many people who have forgotten how Indonesia looked like in the years past. Agriculture that should make us better off has been neglected and lost its importance. Farmers are ignored and farming is slowly losing its grounds. Environmental degradation in the forms of air, water and noise pollutions has become more real.

Developments in science and technology are some of the tools to bring farming in the better direction. Indmira is a research-based company that focuses on agriculture, environment, and renewable energy and is open to have a synergy with those who want to restore Indonesian agriculture to its glory days. One of the ways to achieve this intention is to collaborate with International Association of Students in Agricultural and Related Sciences (IAAS) UGM.

IAAS UGM is a place for students of agriculture to conceive their aspirations through participations in many agricultural activities. In this program, students are trained to increase their skills in problem solving for agriculture. This objective matches to one of Indmira’s missions, and thus this collaboration should encourage creations of ideas and creativity from the youths for agriculture. participants

IAAS has a program called Expronas (National Exchange Program), in which UGM hosts students from other universities and places them in many participating institutions , including Indmira. This program is two weeks long. Expronas participants at Indmira this year are from IPB (Bogor Agricultural Institute), UnRam (Mataram University) UB (Brawijaya University), and UNS (Sebelas Maret University).

During this period, the students participate in the production, packaging and delivery at Indmira’s Amboja farm. They also build verticultures at the Fun Farm on Merapi (FFM, a CSR project of Indmira) and apply this newly acquired skill  with our friends at Agradaya. They also help Agradaya teach farming to some children in Minggir, Sleman.  Besides observing the large scale production at Amboja, the students get to visit an organic farmers’ market held by Pasar Organic Jogja. Hopefully, these kinds of activities can inspire the next generations to take Indonesian agriculture to a better direction. Best of luck to our friends at IAAS.(An)