Maintaining Food Security Through Rural Agroindustry During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that began to enter and spread to Indonesia in early 2020 had a very broad impact not only on public health but on various aspects of people's lives, including the agricultural sector. The interrelationships between sectors of life have caused no sector to escape the effects of this pandemic, only the scale of the impact is different. This paper describes maintaining food security through rural agro-industry during and after the COVOD-19 pandemic. This paper is based on several related literatures. Food security must be realized at all levels, from the family level to the national level. Rural areas have enormous agricultural potential to be developed into an agro-industry business. The development of rural agro-industry is very promising, because in addition to sufficient agricultural potential, sufficient labor (farmers) is also available. Some obstacles to the development of rural agro-industry include the discontinuous availability of raw materials, limited access to capital, inadequate human resource skills, limited rural infrastructure such as electricity, water, road facilities. This obstacle can be overcome if the government together with the community make maximum efforts to make rural areas the basis for agro-industry development in an effort to maintain food security. If rural agro-industry is successful, it will increase economic activity in rural areas which in the end is expected to maintain food security and increase people's income.

Keywords: food security, agroindustry, COVID-19 pandemic

DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/12-24-04

Publication date: December 31^st 2022