Leuweung Mukti: Initiative of IPB Students to Fosters Economy and Sustainability in Karacak Village Through Food Forests
The Program for Strengthening the Capacity of Student Organizations (PPK Ormawa) team from IPB University’s Forest Management Students’ Club (FMSC) is running the Leuweung Mukti program in Karacak Village, Leuwiliang Sub-district, Bogor Regency, West Java.
Carrying the concept of a food forest, this program integrates food security, improvement of farmers’ family economy, and environmental sustainability through agroforestry practices.
This program emerges as an effort to address the issues faced by the village community, ranging from non-intensive management of community forests, suboptimal land utilization, to limited cultivation and post-harvest technology.
Ghina Khansa, one of the student representatives, explained that Leuweung Mukti is implemented through three main schemes: sustainable enterprises, sustainable production, and social sustainability. The initial achievements of these three schemes have been clearly evident.
“In sustainable production, the community succeeded in preparing beehives, planting flowers as feed for bees, planting cardamom, taro, and canna tubers, as well as revitalizing oyster mushroom cultivation houses,” she said.
For sustainable enterprises, the student team developed value-added products from harvests through the ‘Karacak Innovation Kitchen’ production kitchen. As a result, four processed food products by village women have obtained halal certification and business registration numbers (NIB), ready to be marketed more widely.
“Meanwhile, in social sustainability, farmer group institutions are becoming stronger with the formation of KTH (Forest Farmer Group) Jaya Makmur and the strengthening of KTH Wana Raya,” Ghina added.
Besides the village government and farmer groups, this program is also supported by local environmental activists. Agus, who has long been active in mobilizing the community on environmental issues, also strengthens the program’s social approach to align with efforts to conserve community forests.
“This collaboration reflects that the program’s success does not rely solely on students, but is the result of joint work by various community elements,” said Ghina.
Youth involvement is also an important part. Representatives of the women farmer group (KWT) also encourage youth to participate in food forest management, thus creating regeneration in the village’s agricultural and forestry activities.
With multi-stakeholder support involving the village government, farmer groups, youth, environmental activists, and the general public, Ghina and the PPK Ormawa FMSC team are optimistic that Karacak Village can grow into a model food forest in Indonesia.
“The Leuweung Mukti program is not just an empowerment initiative, but a real representation of collaboration that connects knowledge, innovation, and local wisdom to achieve food security and the welfare of the village community,” she concluded. (*/Rz) (IAAS/KMR)
