Financial analysis of direct application of reactive phosphate rock fertilizer on corn farming on upland acid soils

Abstract

Indonesia has extensive upland acid soils, which is around 99.6 million hectares spread across Sumatera, Kalimantan and Papua Islands. The use of upland acid soils for food crops is an urgent need because of the government's self-sufficiency target, including corn. The level of nutrient in upland acid soils is relatively low so it requires adequate input of ameliorant, inorganic and organic fertilizers to produce high corn yield. A demonstration farm of corn based on the direct application of reactive phosphate rock (RPR) fertilizer was carried out in rainy season 2018/2019 by involving three farmer groups as cooperative farmers, with an area of 50 ha in Margosari village, Metrokibang subdistrict, Lampung Timur Regency. This paper presents the results of financial analysis of corn farming at the demonstration farm area. Data was gathered from 52 farmers (43.7% of the cooperative farmers) which randomly selected as survey respondents. The results of the analysis showed that balanced fertilization using RPR as much as 1 t ha-1 as a source of P fertilizer was financially benefited to farmers. The average corn productivity of hybrid varieties reached 14.357 t ha-1 and it gave an R/C ratio of 1.8.