Dengan Program Magang di Jepang, Berhasil Dirikan Okiagaru Mart
Agus Ali Nurdin is a D3 (Diploma) graduate of Seed Technology batch 39. He then took part in an internship program to Japan which is also a program of the Ministry of Agriculture from 2008 to 2009. He then carried out his Bachelor of Agronomy at IPB University. With the program that he participated in with other alumni of the Japanese Internship Program (IKMAJA), he managed to build the Okiagaru Mart which supplies vegetable products to Japanese restaurants in Indonesia.
After completing his internship program in Japan, Agus began to cultivate two hectares of land and grow Japanese vegetables. This Okiagaru Mart comes from Okiagaru Farm which is led by Agus who is also the owner and pioneer of Okiagaru Farm. The company has a vision to be a young farmer agribusiness institution that is independent, innovative, professional, of international standard, based on sharia economy, and environmentally friendly. Okiagaru Farm started as a farmer group community.
Agus is one of the recipients of business capital assistance from the Young Agricultural Entrepreneurial Growth Program (PWMP) in 2017. He is known as a millennial farmer who is humorous, friendly, polite, and full of dedication to the younger generation. He said that his income from farming can reach Rp 500 million per month. This has succeeded in inspiring millennials to the world of farming.
His pioneering struggle to develop this business began with a period of waiting for departure to take part in an agricultural internship to Japan, where the condition was that he had to have two years of experience in a farmer group.
In this way, Agus, who collaborated with his friends, Yuki and Popey, created a community with the name "Bangkit dan Generating" which became "Okiagaru" in Japanese.
The activities carried out by Okiagaru Farm itself include P4S, namely the Rural Self-Help Training Center as a training location for farmers.
Agus has participated in the JICA program since 2018 and his land has been certified organic since 2016 from LSO Inofice. With the hard work he has gone through, Okiagaru Farm already owns 17 hectares of land which has been spread across several areas, including Cianjur, Cisarua, and Depok.
On those lands, Agus grows about one hundred types of vegetables and as many as 50 percent are native Japanese vegetables, such as kyuri (japanese cucumber), horenzo (Japanese spinach), kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), satsumaimo (Japanese sweet potato), zucchini, and negi.
According to him, young people must learn to use their own time for something more productive, and must be able to become the initiator of a better change in the nation. That way, he hopes they will be able to take advantage of various facilities and absorb government programs related to agriculture.
In 2019, Agus was selected as one of the Millennial Agricultural Entrepreneurs Ambassadors by the Ministry of Agriculture. Agus hopes that the millennial generation can focus and work together to develop the agricultural sector. Farming also turned out to be a promising business.
With his success in maintaining and establishing Okiagaru Farm, Agus is very determined to develop his business by establishing a cooperative and he succeeded in building Okiagaru Mart.(*)
