Yogyakarta, (Antara Jogja) - Agroindustry in Indonesia  this decade has been growing well, especially in the level of home industry and micro, small and medium enterprises, said the lecturer of the Faculty of Agriculture, Veteran National University of Yogyakarta Muhammad Nurcholis.

"One of indicators of agroindustry development  can be seen from the increasing number of home industry and SMEs, especially those using basic materials from agricultural products,” he said in Yogyakarta on Wednesday.

On the sidelines of the International Conference on Green Agro Industry (ICGAI) 2017, Nurcholis said the development of agro-industries at home and UMKM levels could be seen from businesses that were originally only done by family members, then they were able to hire people around them.

In the midst of that development, according to him, academics have a social responsibility to identify problems in order to generate a solution contribution.

"It is to support agro-industry to keep increasing both in quality and quantity," said Nurcholis who is also Chairman of ICGAI Committee 2017.

According to him, problem identification is done from all aspects, starting from "on farm" or any process directly related to agriculture cultivation in field to "off farm" which is the process of commercialization of agricultural products.

"Therefore, academics from Asian and European countries are expected to exchange information in ICGAI, especially since these countries have different agro-industry character," he said.

In Indonesia, for example, there are more prominent sector of the home industry because the majority of people have a narrow land. The condition is different from New Zealand which has a large area of ??land as a farm location to produce large-scale milk.

He said the academics who participated in ICGAI were from Asian and European countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, the Netherlands, Hungary and Indonesia. They discussed agro-industry from upstream to downstream, especially related to food health.

"The scientific meeting is also a communication medium between academia, institutions and stakeholders in the development of agroindustry, especially in the application of science and technology, innovation and network expansion," Nurcholis said.