THE PRIORITY STRATEGY IN AGRICULTURE SECTOR ACTIVITY BY AMIL ZAKAT INSTITUTES

Economic empowerment efforts for farmers are difficult to implement properly. However, as a social responsibility, aimed at helping the government reduce poverty, the Amil Zakat Institute (LAZ) that collects zakat (charitable donations), infaq (pious spending) and alms (ZIS) from the communities, and continues to make a determined effort to empower farmers. Only a few LAZ initiatives have successfully managed to fulfil this role, in the wake of some challenges including; modelling, the implementation of productive farming activity, the sale of produce, and the development of farmers livelihoods, that must be faced and overcome. This study aims to understand the main problem, find a solution, and ascertain the priority for the implementation of agricultural programmes by LAZ in effort to improve the welfare of farmers. The study uses a mix of methods, which combines qualitative and quantitative techniques such as the Analytic Network Process (ANP) data analysis method. Data collected from 3 (three) LAZ namely: LAZ-PPPA Daarul Qu’ran (through the Daqu Agrotechno Programme), LAZ-Dompet Dhuafa (through the Indonesia Healthy Farm Programme) and LAZ-Al-Azhar (through the Real Farmers Programme), that analysed the 2019 period. This study found that ZIS utilisation for the programmes that applied the maqasid shariah principle, resulted in improved agricultural development policies with better performance in order to achieve falah (the welfare) of the of farmers. This research recommends that BAZNAS to be cooperates with those LAZs to implement the programmes of agriculture to decrease the poverty of Indonesia farmers.