Dadi Rusendi

I am a senior lecturer at the Department of Bioresources Engineering, Faculty of Agro-Industrial Technology, Padjadjaran University in Indonesia. I am also in charge as an Executive Secretary at The Appropiate Technology Research and Development, Research Institute of Padjadjaran University.
My expertise is focused on Waste Management, Post-harvest and Food Process Engineering, and Farm Machinery Design.

I am surprised with the very prospective business when I filled in the Excel financial worksheet. Hence, in addition to develop Emping Jagung business as community development as described in Round 1 Business Plan, I decided to start an Emping Jagung business myself not only as my source of income for a decent living but also provided jobs and income for rural people, before and after my retirement.

My ambition is to earn a decent living by fulfilling the local market (West Java Province) demand, that is still widely opened, of 144 tons Emping Jagung/year (source: Ministry of Trade and Industry, 2004). However, I will only plan to produce 23.1 tons/year to fulfil 16% to 20% of market demand in the next three years due to large finance to be invested. But, I will re-invest some profit gained obtained in the next three years to finance and produce Emping Jagung to occupy up to 30% local market demand in the fifth year.

I have experienced and involved for more than 20 years on community development to empower rural people to increase their standard of life by digging up the local resources potential. I started my research on corn-based processing technology in 1999 concerned with the farmers at the corn production centre that mostly have not been gaining proper profit or, in fact, suffer a financial loss since the launching of National Community Movement on Corn Cultivation by the Government of Indonesia in 1997. I found that the problem faced by the corn farmers is due to their weak bargaining power when they only sell the product in the form of raw material.