Students enhance coffee quality in village through community service

Mataram (ANTARA) - Students of Mataram University's Department of Food Technology in West Nusa Tenggara partook in an educational activity for improving the quality of producing and serving coffee in Sedau Village, West Lombok, on Monday.

The activity was part of the community service program (KKN), initiated under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology's program of Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM or Freedom in Learning and Campus).

Indriyatno, the Mataram University lecturer, who mentored the KKN activities, spoke at length about the material given during the training for enhancing the quality of roasting and serving coffee.

"This is not separate from Mount Jae that is a tourist attraction. The community needs to upgrade the quality of coffee offered to visitors," he explained.

Through training in roasting and presenting coffee, he expressed optimism that the standard of coffee production in that area would advance.

Indriyatno pointed to the average scale of coffee production in Sedau Village that had impacted its qualities.

"This can be one of the ways for students to strive (to improve the quality of coffee production)," he remarked.

Indriyatno expressed belief that such educational activity would branch out to other villages that also manufacture coffee.

He noted that the MBKM community service is held in a three-monthly period, as it is the application of knowledge and skills that students had acquired from learning at the campus.

Indriyatno emphasized that the educational program also applied the "Rumah Pangan Lestari," or the sustainable food center program, based on the government policy in 2013 when the price of chili had soared. The program aims to optimize the use of house yards to grow commodities.

"This area (Sedau Village in West Lombok) mostly produces robusta coffee," Indriyatno noted.