School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences - Theses
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ItemA whole-farm study of draught animal power systems in West Java, Indonesia( 1999)Draught animals continue to be used widely for land preparation in Indonesian smallholder agriculture despite the adoption of tractors in some other Southeast Asian countries. This implies that rearing and utilisation of draught animals can provide significant economic benefits to Indonesian farmers. This study attempts to define, explore and quantify these benefits and examine the outcome of selected changes to current animal management. Cattle and buffalo are the main providers of draught animal power. Most are raised on smallholder farms where they must compete with other enterprises for use of the farm's resources. They also generate income through producing outputs which are not draught-related. These factors made it necessary to look at draught-capable animals within the operation of the whole farm system, rather than assessing only their contribution to land preparation. A monitoring study was conducted over 14 months in Subang. West Java, Indonesia, with eighty respondent farmers. Data was collected on all inputs to and outputs from the respondent's farm, plus utilisation of the family's labour outside the farm. Linear programming was used to develop models representative of the Subang area based on data from the monitoring study. Three scenarios were simulated. Firstly, a manual labour farm with no utilisation of draught animals; secondly, the same farm but allowing for the hiring-in of draught animals to prepare land for irrigated rice production; thirdly, both rearing and utilisation of draught animals on the model farm. Two additional scenarios looked at the income effects of reducing labour requirements for cut-and-carry feeding and increasing calf output. The lowest Total Gross Margin of Rp2.4 million was recorded on the manual labour farm. A very small increase in TGM followed the hiring-in of draught animals; a larger increase in TGM resulted from rearing draught-capable animals on the farm. Reducing labour for animal feeding had little effect on TGM; increasing calf output had a greater income effect. The models indicate that most of the income benefits associated with cattle or buffalo enterprises derive from non-draught functions, with limited scope for obtaining increased income through changes to draught practices. This implies that the mode] simulated smallholders farm conditions with reasonable accuracy, as almost 90 per cent of farmers in the study area chose not to rear cattle or buffalo but most do rent-in draught animal power from the 10 per cent that rear large ruminants. The umbrella hypothesis of the study-that farmers are generally efficient in the allocation of their resources-remains to be disproved. In terms of future research, priority should be placed on reproductive strategies including a reduction in the calving interval and accelerated early calf growth. Both offer opportunities for obtaining substantial increases in net revenue, as the current levels of productivity achieved in the study area fall well short of management standards commonly achieved in other farming systems.
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