In the summer of 2001, Andres Barahona, a senior agricultural economics major at Texas A&M, traveled to Bali, Indonesia, for an internship and started a fresh fruit processing business with a group of Indonesians. By the end of the trip he could converse in Bahasa Indonesia, the country’s official language. He said the experience opened his eyes. “(It) helped me understand the need for help in the world,” Bahasa said. He and other Texas A&M students worked with Indonesians to set up businesses aimed at improving Indonesia’s food production and moving its economy forward.
These students were involved in part of a larger project that the International Ag Office has recently completed called the Education for community food Enterprise Development (ECFED). The food development program had two main goals: to improve small-and medium-sized food enterprises and to strengthen Indonesian universities’ abilities to research while improving collaboration with private businesses.
Ninety-five million of Indonesia’s 223 million people work in food production, which is extremely high in comparison to the United States’ 2 percent to 3 percent. Simple economics shows that if food production was to become more efficient, it would free mass amounts of labor that Indonesia could put to other productive uses.
Twenty-five A&M professors from a wide array of fields traveled to Indonesia during the project’s five-year span to put on workshops that “trained the trainers” of Indonesia. Workshop topics focused on food nutrition, food safety, packaging techniques and new product development.
Ed Price, associate vice chancellor for International Agriculture and Federal Relations, said several former students contributed to the creation of ECFED. “The project idea began with a student who was on an internship in an embassy in Indonesia,” Price said. “When he came back, we began development on a program to deal with issues that he saw in Indonesia and issues we had been focusing on. Students are incredibly productive on international projects and are a real asset,” he said.
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