As the single largest employer of Indonesians, particularly at lower income levels, agribusiness development is a priority sector. Currently, work is concentrated in the South Sulawesi province because of the particular importance of agribusiness there and the high potential for further sector development.
The program focuses on improving the livelihoods of farming and coastal communities by providing technical assistance in sub-sectors where Eastern Indonesia has a long-term comparative advantages.
PENSA's Agribusiness Linkages program is working in three key sub-sectors:
- Maize and poultry: assisting farmers by increasing maize productivity, improving post-harvest handling, improving animal husbandry and attracting investment into the poultry processing sector
- Cocoa: improving the efficiency of the supply chain from grower to market and attracting multilateral investment for cocoa productivity improvement on small farms
- Seaweed: establishing a market information system and encouraging investments in semi-processing at the community/village level. The market information system can be seen at www.seaplantnet.net or at the Indonesian language site: www.jasuda.net.
