Operational performance of agricultural machineries managed by custom hiring (UPJA) in Banyumas district of Central Java province

Agricultural mechanization has important role in increasing capacity, efficiency, and effectiveness of agricultural production process. In order to mechanize Indonesian agricultural system, Ministry of Agriculture has facilitated farmers with many agricultural machineries. Farmer institutions that were designated to utilize and manage those agricultural machineries are Agricultural Machinery Custom Hiring (UPJA). In this research, the operational performances of agricultural machineries managed by the UPJA in Banyumas District were studied. The research were done by desk study, focus group discussion, field survey to 7 UPJA, and measuring the performance of machineries utilized by those UPJA. The results showed that all of UPJA were in beginner status. The common owned and operated agricultural machinery was hand tractor, while four wheel tractor, rice transplanter, power weeder, and rice combine harvester were limited. In general the operational performances of the machines were low. The most factors affected the performance were time required for transportation from garage to the field. In case of hand tractor, the time consumed was 9.46 of total working hour. For four wheel tractor, rice transplanter, and rice combine harvester, the time required for transportation were 4.19, 8.16, and 7.18 respectively. The other factors slightly affected the performance were time losses due to machine preparation and machine trouble. It is suggested to facilitate farm road and towing truck to transport the machines, or develop garage not far from field. © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.