Factors influencing the adoption of rice paddy threshing machine “Powered-Thresher”: A case study of Serang District, Banten Province

Abstract

Mulyaqin T, Keichi I. 2017. Factors influencing the adoption of rice paddy threshing machine “Powered-Thresher”: A case study of Serang District, Banten Province. Pros Sem Nas Masy Biodiv Indon 3: 420-425. For ensuring national food security, main focus policy of Indonesia government is not only to increase rice production, but also to reduce harvest and post-harvest losses in order to safe rice production. Introducing and disseminating threshing machine such as powered-thresher to rice farmer is one of the government efforts to reduce yield losses and labor cost, especially on threshing stage. This paper examined the factors influencing the adoption of powered-thresher in rice production area in Serang District, Banten Province, Indonesia. The data used in this study were collected mainly through an interview survey using structured questioner to 103 respondents, including 61 respondents as adopters and 42 respondents as non-adopters of paddy’s threshing machine. It was conducted in 4 (four) sub-district (Ciruas, Lebak Wangi, Pontang, Tirtayasa) in Serang district area for the first season of 2014/2015 cropping season with descriptive statistics and probit logistic regression model as a tool for data analysis. Empirical study shows that the significant factors influencing the adoption of power threshers positively are farm size and financial source, and the significant factors that influencing the adoption of power thresher negatively are the labor availability including the number of the household member who working in farm and side job as a labor and threshing cost. This is true in the case of a non-adopter area where high labor availability prevents the use of power thresher because of the possibility of conflict due to labor displacement. However, dissemination information about the machine through agriculture extension activity by stakeholder (government, extension officer, farmers) to the farmer as a user is the important factor to increase adoption of agriculture technology, especially this kind of threshing machine.