AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND FOOD CROP PRODUCTIVITY: A CASE STUDY OF EAST JAVA PROVINCE INDONESIA
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2017-02-08
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
East Java Province is one of the most important contributors to Indonesia’s food reserves and security. In order to maintain food crop production sustainability, Indonesia’s government implemented several policies, such as reengineering extension workers, enhancing integrated crop management field school, providing fertilizer subsidies, maintaining irrigated areas, and obtaining machinery grants. This study explores these policies’ impacts on food crop productivity in East Java Province. Using panel data from 38 regencies and municipalities from 2010 to 2014, this study estimates the agricultural production function to find the most important policies influencing food crop productivity. This study also illustrates productivity differences among regions, describes the strategy of agricultural development—the use of fertilizer (i.e., biological package) and the use of machines (i.e., technological package)—and measures the sources of productivity gaps between regions and growth rate contributors of food crop productivity. The regression results showed that irrigated wetland, fertilizer subsidies, extension workers, farmer field schools, and machinery grants have significant impacts on food crop productivity. This study found that East Java Province has not yet used labor-saving technology to their fullest extents. Hence, the implementation of the biological package is probably more important than the technological package. The preservation of irrigated wetland is more effective than other policies, such as fertilizer subsidies, recruiting extension workers, promotion farmer field school, and providing agricultural machinery grants.
Keywords: food crop productivity; productivity gap; agricultural land; fertilizer subsidy; extension worker; irrigated wetland; integrated crop management field school
Description
Keywords
food crop productivity, productivity gap, irrigated wetland