Soybean Farming Income between Cooperators and Non-Cooperators during Farmer Field School Program in Central Lombok - Indonesia

Institute for Assessment of Agricultural Technology (Balai Pengkajian Teknologi Pertanian), West Nusa Tenggara Province 83371 Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: sylviakutami@gmail.com

Abstract

Soybean is one of the strategic commodities in Indonesia. Demand of soybean continues to increase every year but not followed by adequate supply. In order to increase soybean production, apart from being driven from technical aspects, it is also necessary to pay attention to farmer participation. The aimed of this study were to examine differences in income of the cooperator and non-cooperator farmers during farmer field school (FFS) program and to measure level of technology applied by co-operator farmers in Central Lombok Regency, Indonesia. Numbers of respondents in this study were 26 farmers who were taken by purposive sampling. The research used quantitative method using Benefit Cost (B/C) ratio analysis to calculate the feasibility of farming and scoring analysis to measure the level of technology applied. The results showed that there was a difference in income between co-operator and non-co-operator farmers. The B/C ratios of the two farmer groups indicated that feasibility value were 1.22 and 0.87 for cooperators and non-cooperators, respectively. Those values mean that farming in the FFS program was profitable to implement, while non FFS farming was still feasible but have not provided benefits. The level of technology applied by co-operators was still in the medium category.