Farmers' Response to Economic Benefits of Integrated Farming

Abstract

The availability of abundant cattle waste in a village is an important factor for implementing organic paddy farming practice. The utilization of cattle waste in SRI practice, biogas and worm cultivation increase farmers' income but this issue is not informed well to farmes because traditionally agricultural extention agent focused on delivering cropping techniques than economic advantages. The objective of this study is to assess farmers' response to the possibility of inserting the information about the economic benefits of integrating SRI, biogas, and worm cultivation in the SRI extension program, The respondents were conventional farmers in Boyolali District and using added value and farmers' response concept. There are three activities in this research namely obtaining added value throughout biogas value chain, presenting the added value to farmers, and receiving farmers' response. The results shows in three parts of biogas value chain increase farmers' economic benefits from 974.000 IDR/year to 5.18 million IDR/year. Conventional farmers give high positive response to the integration of implementing SRI and following biogas project and receiving added value from installing biogas digester. However, farmers give low response to cultivate worm due to unstable demand and its price volatilization.