Why Vetiver Grass Fails to Show Its Miracles in Central Java, Indonesia?

摘要

Problems encountered in promoting vetiver as miracle grass for solving land degradation issues in Central Java Province can be categorized into several aspects; (1) Supporting system, (2) farmers' preferences , (3) expertise, and (4) budget availability. Several attempts have been made and its impacts proved yet vetiver is still being considered to be less useful than other approaches in combating land degradation, as it is just a grass. Users find it hard to believe that a grass can prevent slope erosion or purify water from contagious related poisonous water; for example, even it costs much less than existing solutions. At the initiation phase of any new prospective technologies, government still plays an important role in developing them. In this case the government put vetiver grass technology under non-priority issues until it is proved to be useful. The supporting system such as research institutions, extension stations, local government administrations upon which farmers groups rely on will not consider any important technology related input nor dissemination to the end users due to low priority funding. At the same time farmers who suffer from land degradation mostly depend on their relatively small scale of land possession and live under stressful conditions. Those who raise cattle or goats prefer to grow elephant grass than vetiver grass for forage and optimize their land for cassava without considering the negative impact that might be generated. The lack of professionals with expertise in vetiver grass technology is so obvious that vetiver promotion effort fails to find the right path due to a lack of expert design and implementation advice. There are people still working on it because they have faith and concern about the sustainability of the environment. An in-depth study on every aspect of vetiver technology is essential and can also be considered as one of the root problems. Above all, the budget provided (especially from government expenditure) in attempting to develop and disseminate vetiver knowledge and skill is almost zero. Most access to information of new vetiver technology remains unproved at local specific conditions due to the lack of several aspects stated earlier.