Jakarta, April 8, 2025 – The Europe Today: President Prabowo Subianto has unveiled an ambitious plan to establish 80,000 Red and White Village Cooperatives (KopDes) across Indonesia, aimed at enhancing the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen. The initiative, announced during the national harvest event in Majalengka on Monday, is designed to streamline agricultural supply chains, reduce reliance on intermediaries, and provide essential services directly to rural communities.
“Our goal is to ensure that each village cooperative has two trucks to transport farmers’ produce to the market,” President Prabowo stated. He added that these cooperatives will be equipped with business credit facilities to purchase the trucks, as well as cold storage rooms to preserve both agricultural harvests and fish caught by fishermen.
In addition to transportation and storage, the village cooperatives will distribute subsidized fertilizers directly to farmer groups, bypassing middlemen to ensure more affordable prices for the agricultural community. “The fertilizers will be directly accessible to farmer groups to eliminate intermediaries,” Prabowo explained.
The cooperatives will also serve as hubs for essential goods, with each cooperative featuring a village pharmacy offering generic medications at significantly lower prices. “These generic drugs will be available to the community at prices up to 90% cheaper than those in urban areas,” he noted.
President Prabowo emphasized that the new initiative aims not only to reduce food prices for consumers but also to improve the economic welfare of farmers and fishermen by ensuring fair pricing for their products. “We hope to help lower food prices and improve the income of our farmers,” he added.
The establishment of the Red and White Village Cooperatives forms part of a broader strategy announced on March 3, 2025, to create economic activity centers in each village. These centers will absorb local agricultural products and create a more direct link between producers and consumers, thus shortening the distribution chain and benefiting both local farmers and the community.
