Article written by: Kaoem Telapak
on September 17, 2025
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Story of Sarie Wahyuni Ai: Encourage Young Generations to Care for Farming

Many times, the drive to make positive changes for nature can appear instinctively from within oneself, without anyone or any profession forcing it. Such sentiment is shared by Sarie Wahyuni Ai, member of Kaoem Telapak in Bogor, West Java.

Also called Ai, she has been actively involved in environment and civil welfare topics for over two decades. The core values she implements every day drive her to raise awareness towards the commercial products people consume to both herself and the people around her, as well as raising the young generations’ awareness towards farming as a profession which is currently dominated by adults and elderly people.

These days, Ai is working as the Finance Director of TrendAsia, an organization that focuses on clean energy. She and her coworkers frequently protest the policies from the government or the State Electricity Company (PLN) that are proven to be destructive to the environment, all while offering numerous clean energy alternatives for the nation or the society such as utilizing sunlight, water, and wind.

In addition, TrendAsia has a coffee shop in Pejaten, Jakarta and also a coffee farm in Cimaung, Bandung Regency. Ai explained, “We hope to implement a small-scale solar panel technology to the business, in order to help make the business more environment-friendly.”

Outside of that, Ai is a Facilitator for Kait Nusantara, an association focused on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to help teach basic business knowledge and how to open a business. Founded in 2019, this association was originally intended to support the rattan artisans in Sumbang Bay, East Kalimantan, which then developed and formed partnership with Weekend Workshop (WeWo) and Minister of Manpower.

Furthermore, Kait Nusantara also owns ‘Narrative Lab,’ a writing school program to support the victims of geothermal around the mountains to help the victims voice their aspirations. A similar program existed from 2019-2021 to support the female prisoners in Sukamiskin Female Penitentiary, Bandung.

Ai shared her experience with the writing school program, “This writing school program really helped a lot of people. Take the female prisoners for example, writing really helped them to recover their mental health.”

“Due to the success of the program, Sukamiskin Penitentiary asked us to continue the program in 2025,” she continued.

Managing vegetable farm with young farmers

Ai owns a personal coffee farm in Sarongge, Cianjur Regency, West Java. Within the same region, she also helps manage a vegetable farm with a number of young farmers after she gave them encouragement and education for four years, in order to raise awareness among the young generations toward farming as a profession.

Voluntarily, Ai shared her knowledge to teach the youths in Sarongge about basic business and how to expand the farming business. This helped them greatly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“During COVID-19, the young farmers were restricted from entering Bogor, so I helped offer them a solution to sell their harvest to other regions that possess hidden potentials. They managed to overcome the pandemic after selling their vegetables to other regions like Cianjur,” said Ai.

Thanks to the experience and knowledge, the young farmers now possess their own house and personal farm field. Ai is also able to do business with them, akin to a transaction between a customer and a seller.

Reflecting on this experience, Ai said, “I taught them about business, and they taught me about farming.”

Sarie Wahyuni Ai serving as a Facilitator at the Kait Nusantara event during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Sarie Wahyuni Ai.

How to encourage young generations to care for farming

The effort that Ai and the young farmers put to expand the farming business is the result of her awareness after seeing the reality that the current farming industry is still dominated by adults and elderly people. Meanwhile, many youths are yet to take interest in becoming farmers.

As for the reason why, she speculated, “The typical farmers’ work cycle that still lasts to this very day is to plant, harvest, and sell the harvest to the collectors. Consequently, these farmers frequently obey the market price, causing the business to grow stagnant.

“Because this business prospect appears a bit lackluster in profit, at least at first glance and according to the youths, these youngsters tend to take more interest in working in factories or seeking jobs in big cities,” she continued.

As a result, Ai thought of the ways to encourage the youths to put more care towards farming as a profession. One thing she did was to compare factory workers with farmers, specifically comparing factory workers’ salary in their regions with the workload and the consumptive culture around the factory.

She elaborated, “Many youths only look at the general income of factory workers and then think, ‘Wow the salary is a lot more stable and bigger.’ However, what they don’t see is the debt culture that runs rampant around the factory which may reduce their nett income even further.”

“Not to mention, factory workers work for eight hours or more during work days. This is clearly different from farmers who generally only work for 4-5 hours. Being a farmer would then allow them to use their spare time to do side jobs elsewhere and/or expand their business,” Ai explained further.

Raise awareness towards the things we do and consume

Ai’s effort to raise awareness towards the environment and the professions that require regeneration from the young generations such as farming is the embodiment of her core values to put more care towards the things she does and consumes.

Aside from encouraging young farmers, Ai also attempts to reduce waste from the products she consumes. In addition, she also tries her best to not use palm-based products such as palm-based cooking oil or palm-based make-ups, akin to the Say No to Palm Oil global campaign.

“These are the simple things that I hope can bring greater impacts. The most important thing is to maintain consistency with everything that I’m doing,” she said.

Another thing Ai does is to stop consuming products from brands or companies that evidently destroy the environment, regardless of the products. Whenever a friend would offer such products, Ai would politely decline and explain her reasoning, causing her friends to become more aware of the reasons and begin to do the same thing.

Based on this experience, Ai concluded, “One important lesson from this is to give education to the consumers. As long as people are buying, these companies will continue their business and produce their products. Therefore, by driving consumers away from buying such products, I believe this will help reduce the motivation for this business to continue running.”

She also believed that the young generations tend to lack awareness in the origin of the products they consume, just like how the youths in rural areas lack any interest in farming due to not knowing how to expand its potential even further.

Because of that, she wishes to raise awareness to the young generations towards those things.

“I hope I can motivate our young generations,” said Ai.