Institutional Empowerment of Community Food Barns as an Effort to Strengthen Local Food Security in Tangerang Regency

Abstract

Food security remains a strategic issue in national development that requires strengthening community-based institutions to ensure food availability, accessibility, stability, and sustainability at the local level. Community food barns represent one of the key institutional mechanisms for supporting local food security. However, their implementation continues to face several challenges; weak institutional, limited human resource capacity, inadequate administrative management, and insufficient collaboration. This community service program aimed to strengthen the institutional capacity of community food barns through a collaborative empowerment approach. The program was implemented through a series of activities: needs assessment, socialization, capacity-building training, mentoring, participatory discussions, institutional management practices, and monitoring-evaluation. The results demonstrated significant improvements in participants' understanding of institutional governance, organizational administration, food reserve management, and multi-stakeholder collaboration involving local government, agricultural extension officers, village authorities, and farmer groups. Furthermore, the program produced a collaborative institutional empowerment model that enhanced organizational capacity, strengthened stakeholder coordination, and improved community food reserve management. This model contributes to local food security by reinforcing four key dimensions: food availability, accessibility, stability, and sustainability. Therefore, continuous institutional strengthening of community food barns is recommended as a sustainable community empowerment strategy to enhance local food security and support regional food resilience.