Evaluasi Pengembangan Agropolitan di Kabupaten Semarang

Abstract

Village development is important, not only because there is a gap between urban and rural areas in terms of the poverty level that mainly happens in the villages, but also because of villages’ potential that encourages its development. The government has made several efforts to develop villages by creating agropolitan areas as an alternative solution to improve the rural area development without forgetting the urban areas. An example is the Candigaron agropolitan, which is located in Semarang Regency, with Candigaron village itself as the Central Development Village (Desa Pusat Pertumbuhan/ DPP) together with 7 hinterland villages. Having an agropolitan with all of its facilities is expected to increase the bargaining power of the farmers, so that they will not sell their products or commodities to whole sellers as well as to improve their product quality. The agropolitan infrastructures, such as village main roads, improving the farmer distribution roads, Candigaron agropolitan market and sub stations, coffee warehouses and drying areas located in three district spots, means to do post harvesting and farming product processing infrastructure (for coffee and spices), as well as other supporting facilities have been allocated. However, they have not shown the purpose of the agropolitan program implementation as a real solution to improve the farmers’ economic condition. Considering those problem, we, therefore, need to evaluate the agropolitan showed in the thesis question, “What is the impact of agropolitan toward the economic development of the villagers?”