Mata Kori is a farming group in Pero Village, West Wewewa Subdistrict, who has experienced the benefit of cultivating several vegetable commodities on their farmlands. The farmers in this group were previously rice grain farmers. Nowadays, they have successfully grown 1.200 tomato (Gustavi F1 variety) crops and 1.400 say crops. To do this, they optimized three-hundred-meter square farmland. With the success of their vegetable farming activities, rice grain cultivation activities had become a side hustle for the farmers.

The vegetable cultivation done by the Mata Kori farming group was seen as more profitable than rice grain. From the tomato harvest alone, the farmers could obtain revenue of around IDR 15 Million. It was way more prominent than the result from the rice grain harvest, which only generated IDR 10 Million. The yield of other commodities, such as say, was sold to Waimangura Market, which was not far from their village. Each farmer could take home a profit from IDR 200.000 to IDR 300.000.

The success of vegetable cultivation motivated the Mata Kori farming group to take their activities to the next stage. With the knowledge and experience given by Yayasan Bina Tani Sejahtera (YBTS) through the Agricultural Livelihood Project through Integrated Approach (PERMATA) program supported by William & Lily Foundation, the farmers committed to continue improving their farmlands. This farming group also had opened three-thousand-meter square land to elevate their farming activities. After the success of say and tomatoes, they also expanded their farmlands by cultivating chili from Dewata 43 F1 variety. They had grown 3.000 chili crops, in which each of the group members was responsible for 300-400 plants. In the future, they planned to grow several commodities periodically, such as chili, tomatoes, and green vegetables. Proper planning was expected to ensure the continuity of farmlands’ productivity and the stability of the farming group’s members’ income.