PRIORITY STRATEGIES SELECTION TO PREVENT MIDDLEMEN DOMINATION IN SHORTENING THE DISTRIBUTION CHAIN

Seram Bagian Barat (SBB) Regency is a good location for seaweed cultivation in Maluku Province. The area of land and the amount of seaweed production in the area is vast. However, in one of the giant seaweed-producing areas, the lives of most seaweed farming communities are still below the poverty line and are not prosperous due to the long distribution chain and the dominance of middlemen's role in their business still huge. This study aims to analyse and obtain the best-prioritized strategy to overcome the dominance of middlemen (called tengkulak) in seaweed cultivation using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method with the Liberatore approach. From the results of data processing, it was obtained that the best strategy that became a priority for the prevention of domination in seaweed cultivation was the strategy Utilizing marketplaces or digital marketing with the highest weight of 0.483, followed by the strategy Expanding the Role of Regional Companies in Marketing at the Provincial and District with a weight of 0.241, the strategy Activating Cooperatives on a District Scale with a weight of 0.224. The last one is the strategy The Department of Industry and Trade Regulates the Overall Chain of Commerce" with a weight of 0.036. These results can be used as the basis for policymaking for the Seram Bagian Barat Regency government in shortening the seaweed distribution chain as one of the superior regional commodities so that it can improve the performance of the seaweed supply chain in the future.