Collaboration Between Faculty of Agriculture, Brawijaya University and IRRI (International Rice Research Institute): The CORIGAP CoMPASS Project (Ecosystems Services Survey)

What is IRRI?

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the world’s first research organization dedicated to decreasing poverty and hunger through rice sciene; increasing the health and welfare of rice farmers and consumers; and preserving the rice-growing environment for future generations. Indonesia and IRRI has become partner since 1972 which is mutually beneficial seeing that it has improved livelihoods for Indonesian rice farmers as the rice productivity has been increasing. This collaboration formally began in 20 December 1972. You can check more about IRRI at https://www.irri.org/

CORIGAP CoMPASS Project?

CORIGAP-CoMPASS aims to design routes for agroecological transition towards sustainable food systems. The objectives of this project mainly are about:

1. Generate evidence of increased farmer profitability through integrated and adaptive research on crop and natural resource management
2. Optimize integrated, environmentally sustainable rice production systems
3. Reduce rice yield gaps in lowland rice cropping systems by combining outputs from (1) and (2)
4. Involve the formal development of Learning Alliances (LA)

This project also has been conducted in Indonesia as rice is one of the most important food crops in Indonesia. The country’s 13.2 million hectares rice cultivation represents 24% of the total agricultural area. In sum, Indonesia is considered as the world’s third largest rice producer and the biggest rice consumers. You also can check more about CORIGAP-CoMPASS at https://corigap.irri.org/

Place of activities

The collaboration conducted between IRRI and Brawijaya University is survey project. The survey conducted by IRRI aims to characterize food-producing landscapes, understand the typology of food production systems, assess the synergies and trade-offs of existing food production systems, understand the composition and function of food systems, and describe the environmental institutions that support agroecological transitions. In short, the survey conducted by IRRI aims to diversify the food system. This diversification of the food system is also carried out by comparing the food systems in two different regions.

The areas compared are Lamongan Regency and Malang Regency. IRRI then re-divided the two regions into two representative areas that might give different results, namely the upstream and downstream areas. The consideration is due to the availability of water for agriculture in the upstream and downstream areas which may affect the agricultural system in the area. IRRI then collects a list of sub-districts that are representative of upstream Malang Regency, downstream Malang Regency, upstream Lamongan Regency, and downstream Lamongan Regency, covering an area of at least 100 ha per representative. Survey respondents were obtained based on the limits of each representative which are local farmers in each areas.

The detailed districts are:

a. Malang Regency (Bululawang District, Gondanglegi District, Kepanjen District, and Pagelaran District)

b. Lamongan Regency (Sidomukti District, Sukodadi District, Deket District, and Turi District)

Output

The output of this collaborative activity is ongoing research on rice cultivation in Lamongan Regency and Malang Regency. The results of farmer interviews will be entered into a structured application made by IRRI called ODK (Open Data Kit) Collection. In this application, there is a menu for conducting ground-truth (mandatory in every survey), which indicates the coordinates of the farmer’s land that was being interviewed along with photos of the land and description of the rice planting phase at the time of ground-truthing. The results from this ground-truth will later be connected to the satellite so that IRRI is able to see the complete rice planting phase, both in Malang Regency and Lamongan Regency. This will facilitate further research steps.