Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
According to the latest data, farming with chemical fertilizers is on
average twice as expensive as the use of organic products, while produc-
tion levels are the same, if not a fraction higher in the organic sector [17].
This indicates that the economic crisis has helped to boost the growth of
Indonesia's organic farming sector. The organic system required more la-
bor to apply the organic fertilizer and weeding. The amount of organic
fertilizer applied was 2 Mg ha
-1
for each rice growing season, which was
four-times greater than conventional farming, due to the lack of appropri-
ate technology for application of the organic fertilizer. Weeding in Indo-
nesia is mainly done by hand, and while there are also traditional weeding
tools called “landak” (Figure 2), these tools still require a lot of manual
labor. Total labor time for rice cultivation was 768 man hours ha
-1
for the
conventional system while it was almost twice as high, 1,406 man hours
ha
-1
, for the organic system.
Table 2 shows the gross profi t and wages per working hour between the
organic and conventional farming systems. The yield in the organic farm-
ing system was lower than in the conventional, while the price of organic
rice was 18% higher than conventionally-grown rice, resulting in almost
the same gross profi ts for organic and conventional farming.
TABLE 2:
Comparison of gross profit and hourly wages between organic and conventional
farming system.
Management
Yield
1
(without husk)
Price (Rp kg
-1
)
Gross Profit
(Rp ha
-1
)
Hourly Wage
2
(Rp)
Organic
3.2 Mg
6,500
20,800,000
2,955
Conventional
4.1 Mg
5,500
22,550,000
5,872
1
Yields were obtained by sampling in September, 2008.
2
Hourly wages were calculated as the cost share of total benefits to the landowner,
manager and worker.
Wages per working hour in the organic system, however, were sig-
nifi cantly lower, only about half those in the conventional system. The in-
creased man-hour required in the organic system results in a lower hourly
