The aroma of coffee smelt fullfilling the large room measuring four by six meters. Several men in the room seemed enjoyable sipping a cup of coffee each. They chatted each other casually and sometimes it broke down the laughter. Yes, the culture of drinking coffee every morning and evening is indeed a must for male coffee farmers in Jangkat District, Merangin Regency, Jambi province.

Meanwhile, female coffee farmers actually purchase the coffee to fullfill their daily coffee needs when market day. However, the coffee that sold in market not local product planted in their own fields. Instead, coffee products from outside has low quality and often mixed with corn.

Kondisi ini memang sebuah ironi bagi mereka bila mengingat ribuan hektar ladang kopi yang ada mengelilingi luas wilayah Desa Muara Madras dan Desa Baru, kecamatan Jangkat, kabupaten Merangin, provinsi Jambi. Dua desa ini merupakan penghasil kopi di kecamatan Jangkat. Akan tetapi, produksi kopinya masih rendah dan belum mencukupi untuk memenuhi kebutuhan pasar di wilayahnya.

This condition is ironic for them when considering thousands of hectares of coffee fields that surround the area of Muara Madras and Baru villages, Jangkat district, Merangin regency, Jambi province. These two villages are coffee producers in Jangkat district. Furthermore, the coffee production is still low and unsufficient to fullfill the market needs in those areas. As mentioned by Runi Andeka, a coffee farmer in Gedang village, East Jangkat district, Merangin regency, Jambi. Farmers majority live in this village and surrounding own the coffee plantation at least two hectars. The average type of coffee planted by the farmers is Robusta coffee.

Therefore, the coffee cultivation pattern carried out by Jangkat community is still simple whereas it has been carried out for generations in kind of a broken shoots pattern.The results of the study also shown that there is no special handling in the management of coffee plantations that have been owned by coffee farmers. Whether it's during the process of planting, treament, harvesting, or post-harvesting. This condition is recognized by coffee farmers because there is no knowledge and information about better cultivation techniques.

For example when in planting process, coffee farmers has rarely applied fertilizer to the planting holes. Also during the treatment, when they found pests, it only handled by spraying poison on the pests or doing the cutting. When harvesting and post-harvesting still done randomly without sorting the ready fruit to be harvested. As a result the quality of coffee not quite good because it is mixed with red, yellow and green fruit.

Same treatment when drying the crop, as they did not consider for the picking fruit. Of course, it influenced the product quality. “Any color fruit is picked, whether it's green, yellow or red which collected into one. This will make the selling price become so low,” said Runi one of the coffee farmers.

Same treatment when drying the crop, as they did not consider for the picking fruit. Of course, it influenced the product quality. “Any color fruit is picked, whether it's green, yellow or red which collected into one. This will make the selling price become so low,” said Runi one of the coffee farmers. “If we only rely on coffee, we are not capable to send our children to school. The crop is not a lot and the selling price is still low. But at the field school, we acknowledge the information about what to do to coffee cultivation ” he said.

The problem of low production so far is usually caused by cultivation techniques and seed selection. Some knowledge relates to cultivation started from uniformity of trees in coffee production, through grafting patterns or techniques and post harvest treatment with red fruit picking patterns. Not only cultivation, improvements also needed in processing and marketing the product.

Although this issue has been sosialized to farmers, it takes a long time to change the farmers habit in doing the treatment and managing coffee.

One of the activities that really help farmers in understanding the importance of taking care of Robusta coffee plants is the arrangement and discussion of the seasonal calendar.

Through the seasonal calendar, farmers can determine the best time for doing the treatment to the coffee plantations, starting from the time when to take care of new shoots, to trim the twigs, to fertilize, to graft, to replant plants. For example, in February, a lot of shoots grew in this month, so farmers had to select the production shoots. Therefore, this seasonal calendar is so useful for farmers as a means of controlling the management of coffee plants.

After going through a series of capacity building activities, almost all of the assisted villages in Merangin began showing the improvements in managing their coffee plantations, starting from cultivation, harvesting, to post-harvest. Coffee farmers started to realize that these changes have economic value which requires time and consistency. An intensive guiding process has been also carried out to keep doing the improvement efforts in order to reach the optimal product.

Runi said that currently their coffee production has increased significantly. “In past, it’s hard to produce one tonn crop per hectar for a year, but at this moment it can reach two tonnages per hectar for a year with the improvement of cultivation techniques. Also the selling price is higher because we ‘ve already used the red picking technique in harvest time. The coffee crop can be valued four times as much as a random harvest,” he explained.

The inter-village learning process was also established with the formation of the Association of Farmer Groups (Gapoktan). This will expand the impact of development context of Merangin coffee whereas it does not cover just one village scale but an area. Through this Gapoktan, it is expeced that the inter-village community can support each other as a unit. For example, in terms of the role division of production, processing, marketing, or developing other business opportunities.