Pak Tarwi is an independent farmer from Maluku who has been farming various vegetables since 2013. Since he started, he had followed the traditional farming method commonly implemented by local farmers in Seram, Maluku. However, the conventional method implemented does not follow Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), which caused the harvest result not to be as good as the farmer expected.

GAP is a standardized guide for farmers in growing their crops. The GAP for vegetable farming includes production management, land and medium management, seeding process, maintenance process, fertilization, harvesting, waste management, and many more. Applying GAP will increase the farmers’ productivity and quantity of their harvested goods and ensure the quality of the goods when it arrives to consumers.

Pak Tarwi started to be aware of the utilization of GAP when he received training from Yayasan Bina Tani Sejahtera (YBTS). His keen, friendly, and curious personality made it easier for him to grasp the new knowledge given. The farmer was enthusiastic when following the training program, starting from preparing the land to harvesting. The training on GAP also helped him to take care of the crops infected by the pests. Pak Tarwi believed that the learning process gave him valuable knowledge that could help him improve his land condition.

His resilience in improving his farming resulted in an improved harvest result. After utilizing GAP, he could produce around two tonnes of tomatoes from 1500 crops. It was a vast improvement, as he used to only produce a ton of tomatoes from the same number of crops. A similar result was also seen from the cucumber harvest. His recent harvest could produce up to 2.5 tonnes of cucumbers from 1500 crops. The improved harvest result led to an increase in his profits.

The recent harvest’s success made Pak Tarwi willing to share his GAP knowledge with fellow farmers around him. With the constantly increasing harvest result, he planned to expand his farmland and utilize the young generation to work for his farm.