IPB Students Dominate Land Formation Debate Competition
Again, notable achievements were obtained by Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) students. Three IPB delegations in Land Formation Debate Competition 2018 successfully cleaned-sweep the competition by getting the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Winner last September. Land Formation was a national scale competition that was held by Student Association of Soil Science and Land Resources Padjajaran University, Bandung. This debate competition raised the topic of “Land Improvement for Indonesian Agriculture”.
First place was achieved by IPB team that consisted of Rifat Abdat (Faculty of Agriculture), Randi Firmansyah (Faculty of Human Ecology), and Ziyadatul Ulumil Azizah (Faculty of Agriculture). Second place was achieved by Dzulfahmi Alam (Faculty of Agricultyre), Apip Nurdin (Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences) and Ardiana (Faculty of Agriculture), as for the third place, the team was composed of Sandi Fantea (Faculty of Agricultural Technology), Zulfa Fauziah (Faculty of Economy and Management) and Deasy Ramatia (Faculty of Forestry). The debate mainly talked about the national land improvement issue. Before making it to the debate competition, every participant had to send an essay to be selected. Four IPB teams managed to pass the essay selection.
The decline of national food production that was felt, was caused by the limited productive agricultural land (especially in Java Island) as the impact of functional shift of use like field conversion. The condition was worsened by the global issue of the increase of land degradation in developing countries including Indonesia. Critical thinking and strategic solution became the challenges for all participants.
“The competition was quite challenging. Alhamdulillah we were able to triumph over other teams from the preliminary rounds until the semi-final round. The fun was this, we as IPB team met the other IPB team in the final round. Our team was composed perfectly. We had a member from Soil Science Department and Communication Science Department. Finally, an amazing achievement was gotten. IPB won all the titles of this competition,” said Rifat.
The Land Formation Debate Competition 2018 was conducted to measure the understanding level, analysis skill, and idea delivery in proper Indonesian Language, and to increase the critical thinking comprehensively towards the theory and implementation of agriculture development. The success of IPB student in this competition proved the competency of IPB students in critical thinking in agricultural and land issue. Some of them often participated in competitions, especially students debate.
“Initially we made essay, we pass the selection, then we found out that there were other IPB teams in the competition. The motions were interesting. Every participant was required to be critical towards the problem of land in Indonesia, starting from the watershed (DAS) to the land improvement policy. Finally, the first to the third place were won by IPB teams,” explained Zulfa, the participant that came in the third place in this competition. (CN)
