Fighting a Pest That Has Long Been Ignored
When discussing farmers’ problems, most people immediately think of plummeting grain prices or expensive fertilisers. Rarely does anyone highlight rats as an enemy that is actually much closer and attacks more routinely. In many villages, including Raci Tengah Village, Sidayu District, Gresik Regency, rats are not a seasonal nuisance that comes occasionally. They appear in almost every planting season, eroding harvest yields little by little until farmers become accustomed to considering them part of the risk of farming. This kind of perspective, in my view, is precisely what is dangerous, because a problem considered ordinary, if left unchecked continuously, slowly gnaws away at the main source of livelihood for the village community.
Raci Tengah is a clear example of how dependence on the agricultural sector makes even the smallest disturbance have a major impact. Most of its residents depend on active agricultural land estimated to cover 40 hectares, with rice and secondary crops as the main commodities. I saw for myself how the farmer groups there have actually tried to fight rat attacks, but their methods remain the same: poison and pesticides. The problem is, this approach never truly solves the issue. Poison does kill some rats, but their population breeds faster than the poison’s effect works, while the residue settles in the soil and risks disturbing other organisms that are actually needed to maintain the balance of the paddy field ecosystem. This means farmers are essentially spinning in the same circle without ever escaping the core problem.
From this, I began to think that perhaps what the farmers of Raci Tengah need is not a complicated solution, but a targeted one. The electric rat trap introduced in this community service programme is interesting precisely because of its simplicity. The device works on an easy-to-understand principle: a rat enters through a hole attracted by bait, then is electrocuted by a wire conductor powered by a 12-volt battery. No chemicals contaminate the soil, and no poison needs to be purchased repeatedly. For me, this is not just about a new tool, but about how appropriate technology can be a way out of old habits that have proven less effective. If farmers can make and maintain this kind of device themselves, they will no longer depend on rat poison distributors, and that signifies a small-scale economic independence that is crucial for agriculture that aims to last long-term, not just survive this season.
What made this experience feel different for me as a Management student was realising that the success of a technology never stops at the design table. During the programme, the stages did not end with installing the device and then leaving. There was initial socialisation to build a shared understanding with the farmer groups about why this trap was needed, while also introducing the concept of integrated pest management so that farmers would not only rely on one tool but also understand the pattern of rat attacks themselves. This was followed by direct field training so that farmers knew exactly how to install, operate, and maintain the device themselves, including things that seem trivial but are crucial, such as how to avoid the risk of electric shock when checking the trap.
After the traps were actually installed at points that are rat activity pathways, mentoring continued, helping farmers overcome technical obstacles that arose, until finally a joint evaluation was conducted to see how effective the device was in suppressing pest attacks and how many rats were successfully caught. At this point, I felt that the real role of students is not merely to bring finished goods to the village, but to accompany the community’s adaptation process to something new for them. No matter how sophisticated the technology, it will be useless if the users lack confidence or do not understand how to maintain it, and that is where the students’ presence during the mentoring period becomes the most decisive bridge.
This experience taught me that reducing rat pest attacks and increasing agricultural productivity is not solely about introducing a new tool, but about building the community’s trust and ability to manage their own solutions. The electric rat trap may break, wear out, or need modification over time, but as long as the Raci Tengah farmer groups understand its working principle and dare to maintain it independently, the benefits of this programme will not stop once the community service programme students go home.
That is precisely where the true measure of success for community service lies: not in how sophisticated the tool brought is, but in how far the community is able to stand on its own after the mentoring ends. If rat pests can be fought with simple technology fully understood by its users, perhaps that is a sign that small villages like Raci Tengah do not actually lack solutions; they just need the opportunity to try them for themselves.