Competitiveness analysis of fresh tomatoes in Indonesia: Turning comparative advantage into competitive advantage.

Tomato commodity ranks fifth regarding vegetable export volume and value in Indonesia. The main issues with tomato production in Indonesia are seemingly its lack of variations, quantity, quality, and supply continuity. This study aimed to analyze the comparative and the competitive advantages of tomato farming, evaluate the government policy on inputs, outputs, and input-output sectors, and formulate strategic for transforming the comparative advantage into a competitive advantage. Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) and sensitivity analysis were employed as the method with the 75 farmers as the respondents and their Focus Group Discussion (FGD) involving farmer groups, agricultural extension workers, traders, and the Agricultural Service Offices in the respective regencies. The results showed that tomato farming has both its comparative and competitive advantages. Its comparative advantage was higher than its competitive advantage in both dry and wet seasons. In general, tomato farming's comparative and competitive advantages outside Java were higher than those in Java. Meanwhile, the divergence effects of tomato agribusiness were more beneficial to consumers than producers. It indicates that improving domestic tomato production was more profitable for Indonesia than importing this commodity in terms of domestic resource use. The sensitivity analysis shows that tomato farming was relatively stable regarding productivity and price changes. The suggested strategic policies to apply are transforming tomato farming's comparative advantage into competitive advantage through productivity enhancement, improvement of distribution efficiency, less market distortion, and government incentives.

Sustainability status, sensitive and key factors for increasing rice production: A case study in West Java, Indonesia.

The Indonesian rice production balance has managed to show a slightly consistent surplus recently, in the period of 2010 to 2021, but the country has continued to import rice to secure its rice reserve. The country has also made some efforts to increase its domestic rice production and, at the same time, faced ecological, socio-cultural, economic, institutional, and technological sustainability challenges. Previous studies on rice sustainability have shown varied results on the sustainability statuses and sensitive factors in Indonesia, yet there have been limited studies identifying key factors systematically. To provide more solid empirical evidence on this subject, a study to expand the scope to other sites with an additional analysis of the key factors is perceivably needed. This study aims to verify the sustainability status and identify sensitive factors as well as key factors for increasing rice production. The primary data were collected by interviewing officials from various agencies at the central and regional levels and several discussion groups of 40 participants, including farmers. In addition, secondary data were also collected from various ministries/agencies at the central and regional levels. Data analyses use a set of indicators, i.e., the Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) approach and the Matrix of Cross Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification (MICMAC) approach. The results show that the multidimensional sustainability status of increasing rice production in Bandung district is moderate, whereas sustainability status per dimension shows variations from poor to moderate. Fourteen out of 50 attributes are identified as sensitive factors influencing the sustainability of rice production. Six key factors are found to influence the sustainability of rice production. The study concludes that the sustainability status of increasing rice production in Bandung district is moderate, with variation across dimensions. The sustainability of increasing rice production in the study site is influenced by those 14 sensitive factors and those six key factors. This study recommends a number of major policies/programs to increase the sustainability of rice production, which are as follows: implementation of the Regional Spatial Plan, promotion of the application of best practices of farming management (organic fertilizers and pesticides), promotion of the use of agricultural machinery, and provision of farmer assistance for pre-harvest and postharvest production facilities, as well as farm financing. Future research should expand study sites to some other rice production centers with different attributes to enrich our understanding of the subject of rice sustainability.