Suchergebnisse

In developing countries, agriculture's burden is not just ensuring enough food for the people but also securing net income for the farmers to alleviate poverty and to conserve the environment at the same time. Consumption shift towards staples, particularly during economic crisis or pandemic, requires a policy that could make food growers respond to the demand appropriately. Initially, from soil science, an argument asserts that mixing organic and synthetic fertilisers can increase yield/productivity and be safe for the environment. Previous studies showed that, on average organic farming produced lower yield compared to conventional farming using synthetic fertilisers. The objective of this study was to investigate if the farming method using mixed fertilisers could outperform the conventional method. This study used the 2014 household survey data of paddy farmers in West Java, part of a more extensive survey on main agricultural sub-sectors conducted by Statistics Indonesia every ten years. Applying the Stochastic Frontier Analysis and the Generalised Linear Model, this study found that the combination of organic and synthetic fertilisers could yield an efficiency level as high as 9% over the conventional method. The Logit model results also showed that improving efficiency reduced the likelihood of farmer households being in a state of poverty. Therefore, the government should encourage farmers to apply the mixed fertiliser method rather than using only synthetic fertilisers.

The success of Silicon Valley as a technological industrial cluster in the US has made industrial cluster gain a popularity among local authorities in developing countries as a means of enhancing local competitiveness. In West Java, most industrial clusters grow naturally with minimal assistance from the government. They grow naturally as some families' inherited skills are transfered to or imitated by their neighbors and other family members in the same village.The purpose of this research is to identify the clusters and their sizes in West Java. Using 2 sources data from BPS, namely, the 2006 census of formal small scale industries and the 2005 survey of informal small scale and home industries, it is found that the largest clusters in term of size are found in Bogor municipal, bandung municipal, Cirebon municipal, Tasikmalaya city and municipal and Bekasi municipal. The product varies from palm suga, rattan furniture, brick and roof tiles, embroidery and garment. It is also found that industrial clusters in West Java are more of Sonobe's and Otsuka's concept of "one village one product" with few related businesses located in the same location.Keywords: industrial cluster, labor market pooling, specialized suppliers, knowledge spillover, small scale industry, home industry