POWER AVAILABILITY AND REQUIREMENTS FOR SMALL-SCALE RICE FARM OPERATIONS: A CASE IN RIAU PROVINCE, INDONESIA

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify the power availability and requirement for small-scale ricefarming operations in Riau Province. Primary and secondary data were gathered from different sources.A total of 120 farmers were interview to collect data primer from two selected rice centers in tworegencies of the province during the 2008 rainy cropping season. As a result, the availability of farmpower still is very low, although showing an increasing trend during a period of 1997-06 primarily formechanical power unit. During the same period, the stage of rice mechanization process has also beenrelatively low and still below the take-off stage in critical point of the mechanization process. Underthese conditions, it was analyzed that the increased number of farm power has no effect on totalcultivated area and yield of rice over the years. The main sources of farm power practiced by ricefarmers are human labor and mechanical power, while draught animal was not used in Riau rice farmingoperations anymore. Mechanical power is just used to perform land preparation, threshing and millingoperations, while other farm operations are still done completely by manual. The total power requiredper hectare of rice farm operations was 418 kW (561 hp) on average. Although mechanized farmoperations need more power, the total operation hours would decrease significantly. The results suggestthat efforts should be taken to continuously encourage farmers to adopt mechanical power technologiesin order to carry out farm operations timely and short period, and to make rice production process moreproductive and efficient.