The Strengthening Factors of Tea Farmer Cooperative: Case of Indonesian Tea Industry

Plantation sector such as tea has been playing an important role to rural economic. This sector is labor intensive and has been providing an aid program to involve farmers in surrounding area to plant the same crops and buy the yield. However due to lower productivity of farmers, problem in quality and price selling arose and prolonged to other problems. Several policies has been proposed to overcome the problem, and including a policy to establish a tea farmer cooperative. Here, this study is aimed to determine factors that able to strengthen the tea farmer cooperative in commercializing tea farmer products. Some factors that are concerned to influence the performance of cooperative are analyzed using the analytical network process (ANP). The results show that factor of cooperation with other related institutions and environment played an important for the farmer cooperatives in order to increase commercialization aspect of their products. Effort to create added value, market and finance information access, and shareholding are among elements that are most prioritized by farmers groups.