COCOA MARKETING NETWORK IN THE COUNTRY'S BORDER AREAS

Indonesia is an agricultural country so it has a very large potential of agricultural resources. And has sea borders with 10 countries including India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Republic of Palau, Australia, Timor Leste, and Papua New Guinea. One of the important border areas in Indonesia is Sebatik Island. The life of the people of this island is a very distinctive life like other border areas between Indonesia and Malaysia. Cocoa farming is a farm that has been cultivated by the people of Sebatik Island for a long time. The intended target market is domestic and overseas (Malaysia). The interaction between cocoa marketers on Sebatik Island is supported by close kinship and long-standing border relations. In the network, you can see who they ask and who they ask about cocoa marketing. The network forms several groups of small information channels within the farmer groups and the structure that composes them. The higher the activity of individual cocoa farmers in communicating with other farmers, the higher the amount of marketing information exchanged. The research objective is to analyze the structure of the communication network of cocoa communication in Sebatik Island, which consists of three central areas, namely the Districts of Central Sebatik, East Sebatik and North Sebatik. The interaction that occurs is related to the search for information about cocoa marketing. There are 202 cocoa farmers as respondents in the research area. The analysis tool uses a Social Network Analysis approach. The results of the analysis show that there are five market players with two types of cocoa marketing channels. In the context of the cocoa marketing network, traders are the central actors and dominate cocoa marketing information. This condition shows that the cocoa marketing aspect is controlled by traders. The implication of the strategy that can be formulated is the integration of market information from all stakeholders involved so as not to harm farmers.