Indonesia Conference Directory

A study has been undertaking for three years to develop a step by step protocol on systems analysis of smallholder beef farming systems in rural Java. One of the objective of the study is to identify and analyse the effect of government program on beef development. The participants of the research were 50 farmers of beef farming in two farmers group in Kabupaten Banjarnegara, Central Java. A series of direct observation combined with semi-structured interviews and workshops have been carried out to capture the everyday activity of the beef farming and to highlight the potential driven factors affecting the performance of the farming. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse: (i) the activities which commonly performed by farmers before and after receiving government grant (ii) the resources affected and affecting the grant, and (iii) pressures which drove farmers to get the government grant. Then, all the relationship among identified variables were drawn using Vensim® software to develop a qualitative model of the systems. Lastly, a stock and flow dynamic modelling was performed using iThink® software. The model showed several common systems loops as the findings. One of the highlighted was the double effect of government grant to the systems performance. Initial design of the government program was to increase the sufficiency of national beef stock by importing cattle. However, model showed that it also had unintended concequences to increase farmers- expectation to get easy instant cash.