How can we help communities and small-scale enterprises to have a sustainable supply chain for agriculture, fisheries, and creative businesses, thus eradicating poverty without worsening climate change?

Problem: Fragmented supply chain across sectors pose a challenge to economic growth

Supply Chain, Synergy across Sectors, Agriculture, Aquaculture, Farming/Livestock, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Creative Industry

Malang has a number of large economic potentials, from agricultural productions, plantations, fisheries, and artistic crafts, to creative businesses run by Arema Malang. From the tourism sector, Malang also has various tourist destinations, from mountains, urban areas, and historical heritage to beaches. However, problems regarding supply chains still occur in every sector, which means that actors in each sector do not get optimal income, and are even trapped in debt due to low productivity. Sadly, even though it has potential and access to economic improvement, Malang is a regency with the highest populations of underprivileged people in East Javawith 9.45% of its people still living below the poverty line.

Agricultural sector has several challenges that cause food production to decline every year . First, the condition of the land is damageddue to agriculture practices that are not environmentally friendly. Harvest cycles are forced to speed up because farmers want to maximize returns from the money they spend renting the land. Second, sources for irrigation keep shrinking with worsening quality. Green areas are increasingly denuded and the quality of water sources such as Brantas River and its tributaries which irrigate most of the agricultural land in Malang is known as the sixth most polluted river in the world. Both conditions are also exacerbated by climate change.

In the midst of the natural challenges they face, farmers are also constrained by the supply chain conditions for seeds and fertilizer suppliers, and access to sales, making it difficult to obtain decent economic results. This also limits farmers from switching to organic and environmentally friendly farming, which requires time to rest the soil and a longer harvesting period.

Having a coastal area with the presence of reservoirs and lakes means that Malang has great fisheries potential. In the marine sector, there is a practice of excessive fishing, especially in Selat Sempu. This threatens the sustainability of marine ecosystems in the area. Breeding freshwater fish also has good economic potential for the communities who live around lakes and reservoirs. However, supply chain problems in the sale of fish harvestshave resulted in extremely unstable prices and causing losses to fish farmers and fishermen.

As a creative city, there are many people from across generations who are active entrepreneurs in the industry of crafts arts, fashion, culinary, and other fields. In this sector, there are several issues such as how difficult it is to compete with other entrepreneurs from other regions when most of the raw materials are not available in East Java. Moreover, the production capacity is also very limited, far below market demand due to technological limitations and difficulty to find human resourceswho can help run the operations. In fact, as much as 5,7% of the workforce in Malang Regency are still unemployed, making it ranked in the top 10 for the highest percentage of unemployed workforce in East Java. This phenomenon of low quality human resources is also exacerbated by the phenomenon of early marriage that reached 1,393 throughout 2022, the highest in East Java.