Bengkulu
is one of the provinces in Sumatra with an area of 21.168 km². It is on the southwest coast of the island of
Sumatra, and borders the Provinces of West Sumatra, Jambi, South Sumatra and
Lampung. The capital and largest city is Bengkulu city. This area, largely
functioned as agricultural land. This makes Bengkulu, also known as the
plantation areas which has vast and fertile agricultural land. Some
agricultural products derived from Bengkulu are Coffee, Cocoa, Oil Palm and
Rubber. Unfortunately, much of this agricultural production was not matched
with adequate infrastructure. One of the important facility is the road that used
as a means of outcomes plantation
transport . This condition is very concerning because more than half of the
roads in Bengkulu have been damaged.
Base
on the table we can see that the increase in palm oil production in Bengkulu
Province matched by a reduction in the percentage of poor people. In the last
five years, an increase in palm oil production in Bengkulu province are quite
significant. When in 2006 the production
as much as 373.815 tons, in 2010 the production of palm oil increased by
almost 100 percent to reach 615.624 tons (Source: Statistics of Indonesia Plantation 2009-2011). Whereas, the percentage of poverty in the Province of Bengkulu the steadily
declining from year to year. When in 2006, 23% of the population of Bengkulu is in the
poor category, by 2010 this number was reduced to 18.30%. This occurs because in
this time more people are interested in farming palm oil to get the potential income which is very
promising. Previously, farmers in
Bengkulu focus on coffee, rubber and cocoa. But in a
last decade they
switched become oil palm farmers.
