Formulating extension model to encourage staple food diversification: A solution to food crisis potential

Abstract

Indonesia has been facing a high shrinkage of productive paddy land size from 16 704 272 ha in 1983 to 8 685 888 ha in 2013 which decreases to 7.46 million ha in 2019. The reduction of land size within the high growth of population who is strongly dependent on paddy rice staple food could probably bring this country food crisis. The reducing habit of paddy rice eating is valuable to solve the probable problem of rice scarcity, although it is not easy, and needs high persuasion. But unfortunately, current extension tends to only convey information and innovation, either linearly or in a dialogue, lacking a touch for behavior change. Therefore, this research aims to formulate the proper extension model to reduce the acute dependence on paddy rice. By the existence of custom community as cassava rice eater in West Java, Indonesia, the research aims to explore social interaction (SI) between the consumers of cassava rice and people living around them, the impact of SI on the food innovativeness (FI) and tendency of eating pattern change (EPC) of cassava rice eater's surrounding community, and finally the research aims to formulate extension model, which is the main purpose of this study. 182 samples who live around the custom community, are determined by Slovin formula with 5% error probability. The respondent is taken by stratified random sampling. This survey based on path analysis proves the significant direct effect of SI toward FI. Furthermore, the indirect effect of SI on the tendency of EPC through FI is less significant. Therefore, the extension model to develop EPC should create non-rice eater community as an extension agent; and they should be encouraged to enhance SI with surrounding community. This model of extension could be a problem solution for probable food scarcity; and it of course contributes to the existed linier as well as interaction model of extension. However, making non-rice eater community is not easy but probable to implement.