Sustainability of Maize Farming in Grobogan, Central Java. Indonesia

Abstract

Grobogan district is the center for maize cultivation in Central Java province with production contribution of 21.8% in 2016. The types of agricultural land in this district is moor and forest land (pesanggem), thus it is interesting to study the sustainability of maize farming in this location. Farmers are taking consideration of sustainability in terms of land, social, economy and agronomy for the next generation. This study aims to (1) describe maize farming implementation, (2) analyze maize farming sustainability and (3) formulate the efforts to improve maize cultivation sustainability in Grobogan district. Descriptive analysis Majewski Index and SWOT were applied to analyze the data. The results showed that (1) farmers tried to increase production by applying “siti methuk” cultivation technique, where farmers began planting again even though the maize had not been harvested (2) the order of priority for sustainability by farmers is the aspect of land - social - economic - agronomy. The average score of sustainability analysis with The Synthetic Farm Sustainability Index of Majewski is 51.15, (3) the alternative sustainable improvement of maize farming such as subsidies for the price of inputs, facilitation of land conservation infrastructure with deep wells, and seed price subsidies.