The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (FKH) UGM has launched the Kemiri Village, Tanjungsari, Gunungkidul, as a food independent village last Sunday (26/11). Located at the Kemiri Village hall, the declaration was announced through the Gama Agro Med Vet Edupark program, symbolically marked by handing over 4,000 tree seeds to the Village Head and the Head of Youth Organization. This event included a Festival of a Healthy and Food Independent Village which presented a variety of processed food products and facilitated free health screening as well as animal health services.
Dr. drh, Sarmin as one of the research team members told reporters on Tuesday (11/26) that community empowerment activities were carried out to realize Kemiri Village as a center for education and training on applied technology in the field of agricultural technology and animal health. “We also provide interactive consultations between residents and experts to realize Kemiri to be food independent,” he said.
Sarmin said that they planned to develop the village into an agro-tourism village that is based on forests and livestock in Gama Agro MeD Vet Edupark. Therefore, the handover of 4,000 plant seeds supported by the Management Center for Protected Forest Watershed of Serayu Opak Progo could support this direction. Sarmin mentioned several types of tree seedlings to plant including sengon, soursop, mahogany, orange and teak.
Dr. drh. Soedarmanto Indarjulianto, another researcher, said that the selection of Kemiri Village as a location for developing agrotourism, food technology and animal health was because of the high number of worm disease cases infecting cattle, which inhibited their growth. “We see an unhealthy cage environment where livestock live with feces in the cage,” Indarjulianto said.
In addition, the animal health team of FKH UGM also found a case of artificial insemination that failed despite being repeatedly mated. This village is one of the cassava-producing areas. “The team from UGM tries to help livestock health and the development of processed food products as one of the main economic resources of the residents,” he said.
Some of the activities that have been carried out by the UGM Team are processing local forage sources as animal feed. Empowerment for farmers in livestock production and reproduction has also been done through revitalization of cassava and local food sources. “To support this activity, we gave them a number of production tools, including grass chopper, oil slicer and cassava slicer,” he said.
During the assistance, Indarjulianto said, his team had created an encyclopedia of medicinal plants derived from the local wisdom of the Kemiri Village families. They also wrote a book on various Kemiri ancestral recipes and training on the management of natural resource exploitation and conservation policies, improvement of village institutional governance, as well as the introduction of premix flour product, Gama Pantelo instant mocaf pancake.
Source: https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/18785-ugm-canangkan-kemiri-sebagai-desa-mandiri-pangan
