Effects of Sustainable Home-Yard Food Garden (KRPL) Program: A Case of Banten in Indonesia

This study aims to evaluate the effects of an urban and peri-urban agriculture program called Sustainable Home-Yard Food Garden (KRPL, Kawasan Rumah Pangan Lestari) on participants’ household income and identify factors affecting the extent to which a participant is actively involved in the program. Many varieties of fresh vegetables, such as chilies, celery, mustard, kai lan (Chinese broccoli), eggplants, tomatoes, cauliflower, lettuce, packoy (Chinese cabbage), cabbage, long beans, and spinach, are harvested from plastic pots, suggesting the program contributes to dietary diversification. In addition, participating in the KRPL program results in cutting back on expenditure on fresh vegetables and/or increasing household income to a certain extent. The estimation results of the OLS regression model using the interview survey data indicate that a KRPL participant who has a larger number of pots and/or grows more varieties of vegetables tends to exhibit the following characteristics: (1) she likes gardening and/or spending time in nature, (2) she is not motivated by a passive reason for participating in the KRPL program, (3) she grows vegetables for the purpose of selling them, (4) the largest proportion of products is sold to someone or given to her friends/neighbors/relatives, and (5) she resides in the more developed northern part of Banten, which is directly connected to the capital city by the Jakarta-Merak toll road.