IPB Students teach Housewives about Earthworm Cultivation to Increase Their Family’s Income
The team for the Student Creativity Program (PKM) 2018 by the name Perca has made a movement amongst housewives in the Cikarawang Village of Dramaga, bogor. To cultivate earthworms (lumbricus rubellus). Perca is lead by Wulan Wulaningsih of the Family and Consumer Sciences Departement of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) along with her four friends which is directy supervised by Dr. Megawati Simanjuntak, SP, M.Si.
Wahyu expalined that the empowerment program with earthworms as the base has high potential to develop. Presently, not many people are interested in this earthworm business eventhough the demand for these earthworms is very high and the cultivation is quite difficult. The main target of this empowerment program are housewives who come from marginalized families and do not work. The goal of this program is to give a workfield to the housewives which in the end will result in extra income for the family.
This empowerment program started as a socialization program. As many as 24 housewives from two different areas were interested to join this activity which were then grouped in to six groups. The groups were directed to prepare tools and materials for the earthworm cultivation and were supported by their husbands. After preparing the cage, medium, feed, and earthworms, the cultivation process was ready to begin. The planting of the earthworms took around one months time until harvest. The first harvest yielded 17 kilograms and was sold for around the price of Rp. 45.000 for each kilogram to traders or fishing pond businesses.
“We also gave a entreprenuership traning to the housewives so that they will be able to make a business from these earthworms,” she explained. Besides creating a cultivation practice and entrepreneurship training, the team also gave a simple bookkeeping traning, production and marketing of produce management training, and also made several visits to earthworm merchants of Bogor to convince the housewives that earthworm cultivation has potential to develop.
“There is Mrs. Ela, one of the participants, who is interested in opening a earthworm cultivation farm in one of the boarding schools she manages. We will assist the opening process of this business. We plan to do a thorough check of the boarding school area and create a business plan. We hope that this will be a first step to independence for the boarding school’s economy.We hope this program will inspire the community especially the marginalized groups to take oppurtunity of this earthoworm business as an extra income for the family,” she explained. (AVR)
