REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, LAMONGAN -- President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has recommended formal education of oil palm and coffee at Indonesian universities. Jokowi made the statement when officially inaugurating the "Ki Bagus Hadikusumo" Campus Mosque and the groundbreaking for the construction of the tower of the Muhammadiyah University at the STIKES campus.
"We are a big country in commodities such as palm oil , but we have no oil palm faculty. We are also big in coffee production, but we have no coffee faculty," Jokowi said at the Lamongan Muhammadiyah Institute of Health Science (STIKES) in East Java on Monday.
Indonesia with 14 million hectares of oil palm plantations, is the world's largest producer of palm oil and the country ranks among the world largest coffee producers. Indonesia is the second largest producer of robusta coffee after Vietnam. Jokowi recommended the opening of a faculty specially studying the process of production and marketing of coffee.
He pointed to "Cappucino" which is an Italian product, saying Italy does not have up to millions of hectares of coffee plantations.
"Why then we have no coffee faculty studying everything from growing seeds, fertilization, planting , processing. We use our brands, why not," he said.
He said the expansion of the technology would bring about big change in the types of jobs and at the same time many types of jobs would be lost.
"For example, currently postmen or couriers are no longer needed. This is a small example, there would be many more jobs no longr needed such as those of cashier and tellers. There are no longer many needed with the application of e-banking," the president said.
He said he hoped universities would respond to the change with more research activities and initiating change.
"That is what the universities are for. Our faculties have been 30-40 years old on economy and agriculture, while the economy has changed much. Why there is no faculty for digital economy?" he said.
He said he wanted to visit universities which already have digital economic faculty .
"Unfortunately , there is none," he said.
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