Empowerment Strategy Through Salak Fruit

This articles aims to understand the practice of empowerment through assistance to salak farmers. The study includes 60 salak fruit farmers which are taken as the samples. Descriptive analysis is used to analyze the obtained data from the study. The research result shows that most respondents have the relative low level of empowerment. The empowerment level from business aspect explain that most of the respondent (73%) are never and could not got the financial assistant to develop their business. Likewise, it could be happen in the technological access, most of the respondent (56,7%) explain that in the production process the technology that used is base on traditional and hereditary. So, it is depend on labour relieves when the production and harvest process. Furthermore, the research shows that a low level of a capability to access the market information. It could be seen that most of the farmers (38,3%) directly selling their product to the consumers and 33,3% sell their product to the broker. The empowerment from non economic aspect could be seen from the low ability of lobbying aspect, like the asking for a relieves from their colleagues at the local government officer (10%), financial institution like cooperation, bank and etc (25%), society figures (32,1%), employees (32,1%), non government institution/ academision (10%) and a families (93,3%). To empower the farmers in order to make them sustainable, it is necessary to built a partnership by empowerment strategy. The empowerment strategy that involves industry as the farmers' partner is carried out to improve the empowerment of the farmers of salak fruits.Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengeksplorasi praktek pemberdayaan melalui pendampingan petani buah salak. Sebanyak 60 orang petani salak diambil sebagai sampel. Analisis deskriptif telah digunakan untuk menganalisis data dalam penelitian ini. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa sebagian besar masyarakat di daerah penelitian mengaku pada saat panen melimpah harga jual buah salak sangat rendah. Tingkat keberdayaan dari Aspek Usaha menunjukkan bahwa dalam mengakses kredit sebagian besar responden (73%) menyatakan tidak pernah atau tidak mampu mendapatkan kredit untuk pengembangan USAhanya. Demikian juga dalam megakses teknologi sebagian besar responden (56,7%) menyatakan bahwa dalam melakukan proses produksi berdasarkan turun-temurun dimana teknologi dalam melakukan produksi bersifat tradisonal dan menggunakan insting, sehingga masih tergantung adanya bantuan dari orang lain pada saat terjadi masalah baik dalam proses produksi maupun pada saat panen. Selajutnya kemampuan dalam mengakses informasi pasar menunjukkan rendah yang dapat dilihat dari pemasaran hasil panen sebagian besar (38,3%) dijual langsung ke konsumen dan kepada tengkulak (33,3%). Tingkat keberdayaan dari aspek non-ekonmi yang dilihat dari kemampuan lobbying menunjukkan masih relative rendah, seperti keberhasilan dalam meminta bantuan kenalannya di Pemda sebsar 10%, lembaga keuangan seperti koperasi, bank, dan lain sebagainya sebesar 25%, tokoh masyarakat sebesar 32,1%, pengusaha sebesar 32,1%, akademisi/LSM sebesar 10% dan saudara 93,3%. Untuk meningkatkan keberdayaan petani agar mampu menjalankan USAhataninya secara berkelanjutan serta meningkatkan nilai tambah, diperlukan adanya kemitraan yang dapat dilakukan melalui Strategi Pemberdayaan.


INTRODUCTION
Indonesia is known as an agricultural country that has a wealth of natural resources, particularly in agricultural products. The agricultural sector plays an important role in the economic development of Indonesia with its contribution in PDB in 2013 of 14.43 percent, which took the second position after the processing industry sector (BPS, 2014). As the driving force of agricultural development in Indonesia, the agroindustry development effort is essential to implement. This includes several objectives, those are: (a) attracting and encouraging the emergence of new industries in the agricultural sector, (b) creating a strong economic structure, (c) creating the extra value, and (d) creating job opportunities and improving the distribution of income (Soekartawi, 2000).
Agricultural products that have the potential to be developed to an industrial scale are fruits. One of the fruits abundant at harvest time is salak fruits in Sleman Regency, Yogyakarta. Salak fruit grown in Sleman Regency is salak pondoh. The production of salak pondoh in Sleman Regency can be seen in Figure 1.
The figure above shows that the production of Salak Pondoh in Sleman is fluctuating. In 2010 the production of salak pondoh reached 611.69 tons then decreased to 376 tons in 2011. In 2012 the production of salak pondoh increased to 493.76 tons. Salak fruits are perishable products and have a relatively low price because the farmers usu-ally only sell the product of fruits in the form of fresh fruit products without the product diversification. Besides, the farmers also only become the price takers, in which they have no power to set the prices. This makes the farmers sometimes manipulated by the middlemen, especially when the harvest is abundant. Therefore, it requires an effort and an innovation to cultivate the fruits to have a higher economic value and to be able to improve the farmers' welfare.

Empowerment
Pemberdayaan derives from the word "daya" that gets the prefix ber-to be "berdaya" that means to have power. Daya means strength, berdaya means to have strength. Pemberdayaan means to make something powerful or to have power. Pemberdayaan in the Indonesian is a translation of 'empowerment' in English. Pemberdayaan is a translation of 'empowerment' whereas memberdayakan is a translation of 'empower' . In the Oxford English Dictionary (Hornby, 2005), the word 'empower' contains two meanings: (1) to give power or authority to, or to give power, transfer the power or delegate an authority to other parties; (2) to give ability or to enable or an attempt to give the ability or empowerment. Social empowerment is a process of development where the society takes the initiative to start the process of social activities to improve the situation and condition itself (Christenson & Robinson, 1989). According to Uphoff in the Susilowati et al (2004) as follows: Empowerment is particularly challenging because of inherent ambiguity and exclusiveness of what is to be measured. It can be argued with justification that empowerment does not really exist in its own right, that is really a reflection of other things that do. In the context of development, the term 'empowerment' is basically the awareness that the human factor plays an important role in development. Indicator of the level of social empowerment can be seen from the economic and non-economic aspects. Economic aspects consist of Access to Business, Access to Market Information and Access to Technology, while the noneconomic aspects are Access to Lobbying, Access to Penetrating the Limit, and the Role of Stakeholders (Susilowati, 2004). The social empowerment effort can be done by improving the efficiency and productivity through the human resource development, the mastery of technology and the institutional strengthening and the improvement of economic and social infrastructure. This effort requires the synergistic cooperation of the various existing development forces. An empowerment has purposes (testifying, 2003), those are :(1) The inside meaningful empowerment to the society means an effort to transform the social awareness and also to make the society get closer to the access to improve their lives. (2) The outside meaningful empowerment means an effort to drive a change in the policies that are obviously detrimental to the society. Empowerment in this sense means a controller based on an effort to widen the social participation space. In the concept of empowerment, according to Prijono and Pranarka (1996), a man is the subject of himself. Empowerment process that emphasizes the process gives the ability to the society to be empowered, encourages or motivates the individual to have the ability or the empowerment to determine the choice of his life. Further it is said that empowerment must be aimed at groups or segments of society left behind. The elements of social empowerment in general are (1) the inclusion and participation; (2) the access to information; (3) the capacity of local organizations; and (4) the profes-sional empowerment actors. These four elements are related to each other and support each other (Darwanto, 2009).
According to Aziz, et al (2005),social empowerment is a process in which the society, especially those who have less access to the development resources, are encouraged to increase their independence in the nature to develop their livelihood. Social empowerment is also a continuous cycle process, participatory process in which the members of society cooperate in a formal or informal group to share knowledge and experience as well as trying to achieve a common goal. Thus, social empowerment is more a process.
Furthermore, the meaning of empowerment according to Ali (2007) is a social empowerment as a form of participation to liberate oneself from mental and physical dependence. Social participation becomes an essential element in the empowerment strategy and social development, with reasons; First, social participation is a powerful device to mobilize the local resources, to organize and open the power, wisdom, and creativity. Second, social participation also helps the efforts of early identification of social needs.

Salak Fruit
In the Act No.7 in 1996 on food, it is mentioned that the Government organizes the regulating, fostering, controlling and supervising, while the community organizes the production processes and supply, trade, distribution and functions as consumers that have the right to get enough food in quantity and quality, safe, nutritious, diverse, equitable, and can be afforded by them. Furthermore it is reaffirmed in the Government Regulation No.68 in 2002 on Food Security that to meet the consumption needs growing day by day, the efforts of food supply are performed by developing the food production system based on the resources, institutional, and local culture, developing a system efficiency of food businesses, developing the food production technology, developing the infrastructure of food production and sustaining and developing the UNNES JOURNALS productive land. One of the conditions faced by the farmers for food crop commodity is the low productivity (Supadi and Sumedi, 2004). The low farm productivity will lead to lower revenue resulting in weak financial position of the farmers in supporting their economic activities (Nwaru, Onyenweaku, and Nwosu, 2006). The rapid increasing number of population also affects the increasing demand for food. It is certainly feared that the problem of food crisis will arise, because there is a failure to meet the food needs due to the low and inefficient farm productivity in the use of resources. Processing industry of agricultural commodity is one of the potential industries to be developed in Indonesia. This industry is one option to help the farmers in Indonesia to improve their fate and welfare, because by developing agroprocessing industries, there will be the extra value of agricultural commodities, which in turn will be able to improve the farmers' fate and welfare.
Salak is a kind of palm which fruit can be eaten. It is also known as sala (Minangkabau, Makassar, Bugis and Thailand). In English it is called salak or snake fruit, while its scientific name is Salaccazalacca. The fruit is called a snake fruit due to his skin like snake scales (wikipedia org). Salak Fruit Nutrition in 100 Grams is as follows: Air 69.69 grams Source: Tjahjadi, 1989 The commodity of salak is a kind of native tropical fruit of Indonesia that becomes one of the leading commodities and plants suitable for development. In Indonesia there are many different varieties of salak, including: salak pondoh, salak swaru, salak enrekang, salak gula pasir (sugar salak), salak bali, salak padang sidempuan, salak gading ayu, salak pangu, salak sibakua, salak sangata, salak condet, salak manonjaya, salak kersikan, salak bongkok. Among the various kinds and varieties of salak, salak pondoh, swaru, nglumut, enrekang, and gula batu(lump sugar) or bali have the high commercial value, so the varieties are designated by the government as the high varieties to develop (epetani.deptan.go.id).
Salak pondoh is a cultivar developed from a population in the southeastern slope of Mount Merapi, and has been developed in the 1980s. Salak pondoh has some special characters; the fruit pulp is sweet, crisp, and not bitter when it is still not ripe enough. The fruit is one of the significant symbols for Yogyakarta tourism. Salak pondoh itself has various variants. Some famous salak pondoh fruits are pondoh super, pondoh hitam,pondoh gading, pondoh nglumut that is large, and others. In DIY area, the center of salak pondoh production is the area of Mount Merapi slope, which includes Turi District, Sleman Regency (Wikipedia.org). Santoso (1990) and Purnomo (2010) reveal that salak pondoh plant has two growing periods, those are the vegetative and reproductive periods. The vegetative period is the growing period from planting to the forming of the first flowers,while the reproductive period is from the time of flowering, fruit development and ripe. The characteristic of salak pondoh plant is a plant with two homes, so it can be found male plants and female plants. Male flowers have a length of 25-30 cm, stemmed, red-brown sheath, torn on one side, a similar break down fiber, cobs amounted to 3-7 with a length between 7-13 cm, a diameter of 1-2 cm, cylindrical, whitechocolate colored scales arranged like tiles, a pair of pink flowers appears with brownred tip from each armpit scales, so it looks brown red cob. While the female flowers have a length of 20-30 cm, long-stemmed, sheath shorter and wider than in males, brown-red, torn on one side, similar to parse UNNES JOURNALS fiber, cobs numbered 1-3 with a length between 6.5 to 8 cm, diameter 3 -3,5 cm, oval, red. Male plants cannot produce fruit, but the male plant is needed as a source of stamens. Salak pondoh has a higher content of vitamin C, the higher sugar content and the lower acid content than other types of salak (Editor Agromedia, 2007). The average content of vitamin C in salak pondoh is 19.63 mg per 100 g, the reduction sugar content of 21.72 percent, the acid content is 4.93 mg per 100 g,the acid sugar ratio is 3.93. Salak pondoh also has advantages compared with other salak; salak pondoh tastes sweet and not bitter when it is not ripe enough, and it has longer storability because salak pondoh is classified into the fruits with non-climatic respiratory patternthat has relatively longer shelf life in which salak pondoh will start to decompose after 13 days of storage at room temperature (Santoso, 1990).
Like other fruits, salak fruits are easily damaged and not durable if not handled and processed properly. Therefore, in order to be durable and to have an extra economic value, this fruit can then be processed first. The processing aims to improve the quality of the fruits in order to strengthen the durability of the fruits in order to increase its economic value. There are some processing product of salak pondoh, including : candied salak, salak syrup, salak lunkhead, and salak chips.

METHODS
This research was conducted in Sleman Regency, Yogyakarta Special Region Province, which is the largest production center of Salak fruit with the type of what has been known as salak pondoh. The type of data in this research can be divided into two: primary data and secondary data. A number of 60 farmers of salak fruits have been sampled in the research area. The sampling is carried out by simple random sampling technique so that each member of the population has an equal chance to be taken as a sample. In order to obtain the data in a holistic and integrative way and also to pay attention to the relevance of the data with the research focus, the formulation of problems and objectives, the data collection uses some techniques: (1) questionnaire; (2) in-depth interviews; (3) observation. The data analysis techniques used in this research is a descriptive qualitative that describes the processing of salak fruits in increasing the extra value.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Salak farmers in the research area are still performing traditional and hereditary production. This makes the salak farmers tend to let the salak garden grow by itself so most of the farmers are not able to produce the qualified fruits. Besides, the education level of most farmers is still low, that is at the Elementary School, as shown in Table 2 as follows:  Table 2 above shows that the majority of salak farmers in the research area have the low education level that is at the Elementary School (50%). Thus, most farmers do not have the ability in the management, access to capital, and marketing so they just run the activities traditionally.
Most of the respondents in this research are between 31 to 40 years old, or 31.67% (Table 3). This indicates that most salak farmers are at the productive age so they are still unable to diversify the products of salak fruits to have the extra value so as to increase the income of salak farmers in the research area.
Besides, the farmers sell their product directly in the form of fresh fruits that do not have extra value. Some sell with the debt bondage system that is selling the fruits before the harvest, the buyers come directly to the farmers, and the farmers sells the fruits UNNES JOURNALS by themselves (Table 4). Source: processed primary data, 2014 Table 4 above shows that the majority (55%) of the farmers state that other people take from the harvest in the form of fresh fruits, but the farmers cannot bargain the price because if the price is too high no one wants to buy. This is very detrimental to the farmers, especially the small farmers, when the harvest time arrives. There are also farmers who perform debt bondage system (26.33%), that is selling salak when the fruits are still on the tree and not ripe. The debt bondage system will be detrimental to the fruit farmers because sometimes the buyers with debt bondage system estimate using the lowest price by reason that at the time of harvest there will be some fruits that are rotten, dead, or affected by pests, while farmers who harvest their own and sell by themselves in the form of fresh fruits are 21.67%. The farmers sell by themselves by selling salak fruits on the big roadside waiting for people passing the road. Selling salak like this takes a long time, whereas these fruits cannot be durable. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the extra value for the salak farmers.

The Level of Empowerment
Level of empowerment can be measured from several aspects including economic and non-economic aspects. In this research, economic aspects can be seen from Access to Business such as access to capital in financial institutions, access to technology such as access to markets and access to information technology, whereas the noneconomic aspects can be seen from the lobbying capabilities. Access to capital can be seen from a farmer who already has ever or never got a loan / credit from financial institutions. The research shows that most of the farmers' (73%) have never got a loan / credit from a financial institution as shown in Figure  The above figure shows that most farmers have not been able to access to financial institutions in improving their farming. This indicates that farmers in the research area have not been able to be independent (empowered) so they are still susceptible to the business continuity, while an expertise in conducting the farming obtained by the farmers in the research area is mostly obtained from generation to generation as shown in Figure 3 below: The above figure shows that the expertise of most farmers in conducting the farming in the study area is obtained from generation to generation. There is also a self-taught or acquired skill by asking other farmers who run the same kind of farming. Expertise in farming from generation to generation is usually carried out based on the farmers' instinct so they still depend on the aid of others when there are problems both UNNES JOURNALS in the production process and at the abundant harvest that may result in unstable prices.
Source: processed primary data, 2014 Figure 3. Information Sources of Farming The harvest crops of salak fruit farmers are usually sold in the form of fresh fruits and at the harvest season there are a very large number of fruits whereas salak fruits have a perishable nature and are not durable. Most farmers sell their harvest fruits to the consumers directly and even some farmers sell at the roadside especially when the harvest season arrives (Table 5).
The above table shows that farmers sell their harvest crops to the consumers directly, to traditional markets, and also some have their own customers so the buyers come directly to the farmers' and middlemen's house or by debt bondage system.
To take advantage of the abundant fruits at harvest time and to help the farmers, then the processing innovation of salak fruits with Freezing Frying is carried out to be able to increase the selling price of agricultural products and to be long-lasting. The social perception of the processing industry can be seen in Figure 4 below The above figure shows that 73% of the society in the research area expresses their optimism if there is a processing industry for salak fruits that may help to improve their welfare. This indicates that the society welcome enthusiastically the processing industry because it can help to increase the bargaining power of farmers at harvest time.
Relating to the lobbying ability, some respondents have not been able to do and take advantage of acquaintances both in the government and in the society in helping their farming activities. It can be seen from the success in utilizing the acquaintances,most respondents are still less than 50%. More can be seen in Table 4.5 below: The above table shows that most farmers do not have the ability to take advantage of networking opportunities towards the stakeholders or their acquaintances in farming. This makes the farmers in the research area have not been able to get out of their own problems so as to improve the high vulnerability of the farmers' failure, Source: processed primary data, 2014 UNNES JOURNALS which means that the farmers in the research area are still not empowered / independent in carrying out their farming

Empowerment Strategy
To help the salak farmers in the research area, it requires a partnership to do with Empowerment Strategy for salak fruit farming. The farmers provide salak fruits as the raw material while the industry carry out the processing of long-term (durable) salak fruits. This will increase the selling value of the farmers' salak fruits, especially when the harvest season arrives so as to improve the welfare of farmers in the research area. Agricultural commodity processing industry is one industry that is very urgent to develop (blogdetik.com). This industry is one option to help the farmers to be able to improve their welfare. By developing the agro-processing industry, there will be the extra value for various agricultural commodities, which in turn will improve the farmers' welfare.
One agricultural commodity that can be processed so that it can be durable for a long time is salak fruits. By performing the processing of the fruits, the selling price can increase, the shelf life becomes longer, and the marketing can reach wider areas. Besides,the fruit processing also enables the consumers to still enjoy the taste of the fruit although it is not at its season (Caya and Andrew, 2007). The treatment of fruit processing can be done in various processes, including drying, boiling, sugaring, salting, frying, fermenting, canning, and so forth. The processing technology and equipment used are so simple that it can be applied in rural areas as the central fruit production. Processed fruit is a fruit that does not pass the grade or has low-grade quality and physical disability (wounds/bruises) but not damaged/rotten. Some processed fruits are syrup, wet/dry candied fruits, jam, chips and others.
Salak is one of the fruits that are abundant at the harvest time. The development of this kind of fruit usually can only be done in certain areas, according to the type of soil, moisture levels, etc. Besides having abundant harvest, salak fruits are also not durable and all this time most people sell salak fruits without being processed, so the price is very low. The lowest price reaches With the further processing, it can increase the extra value of the product selling and can improve the farmers' welfare. To improve people's welfare especially the salak farmers, the product diversification is performed by processing the fruit into chips to make it durable and have higher selling price. The selling price of salak chips is 125 thousand rupiahs per kg. Fruit chips are the processed fruit products that are processed with vacuum frying, so the ingredients (salak pulp) become crisp and brightly colored after the frying process. This condition cannot be obtained by ordinary frying. To obtain 1kg of fruit chips needs about 4 kg of fruits. Besides,the fruit chips also contain nutrients that are good for health. Investment in processing industry has several purposes, but the main goal is to achieve maximum profits for their survival. The maximum profit will be realized if the company is able to suppress the production and operating costs as low as possible, to set prices in such a way, and to increase the sales volume as much as possible (Supriyono, 1995). The empowerment strategy for salak fruit farming can be seen in Figure 5. Figure 5 can explain that the salak farmers are harvesting and peeling the pulp so the fruits sold to the industry are already in the form of raw material. The farmers will get the extra value and the higher price from the salak fruits that are sold in the form of fresh fruits. Besides, the farmers also perform an additional activity that is peeling, which means it can absorb the surrounding labors to do the peeling. This means it gives improved welfare not only for the farmers but also for the surrounding communities that do not have salak garden by becoming the labors that peel salak fruits.

UNNES JOURNALS
Furthermore, the raw material of salak pulp is purchased for industries for further Freezing-Frying processing in a long term. Of 10 kg of salak pulp, it will produce about 1 kg of processed product of salak fruits that are durable to 2 years. This will certainly be very beneficial because it can be sold throughout the year and is easier to distribute to various cities without feeling worried of rotten fruits. Farmers can also act as the seller agent of the industry.

CONCLUSION
The research result shows that most respondents have the relative low level of empowerment. The empowerment level from business aspect explain that most of the respondent (73%) are never and could not got the financial assistant to develop their business. Likewise, it could be happen in the technological access, most of the respondent (56,7%) explain that in the production process the technology that used is base on traditional and hereditary. So, it is depend on labour relieves when the production and harvest process. Furthermore, the research shows that a low level of a capability to access the market information. It could be seen that most of the farmers (38,3%) directly selling their product to the consumers and 33,3% sell their product to the broker.
The empowerment from non economic aspect could be seen from the low ability of lobbying aspect, like the asking for a relieves from their colleagues at the local government officer (10%), financial institution like cooperation, bank and etc (25%), society figures (32,1%), employees (32,1%), non government institution/ academision (10%) and a families (93,3%).
To empower the farmers in order to make them sustainable, it is necessary to built a partnership by empowerment strategy. The empowerment strategy for salak fruit farming can be carried out to improve the welfare of the salak farmers. This empowerment strategy involves the industry as a partner of farmers to be able to accommodate the harvest crops and process them with Freezing Frying. The farmers can sell salak in the form of fresh fruits or in the form of pulp so it can have a much higher price. Besides, the farmers do not have to worry that their fruits will not be sold because the fruits will be accommodated by the industry when the harvest is abundant. The salak processing with Freezing Frying can be durable for a long time so this method is suitable for processing the very abundant salak fruits at harvest time.