| dc.description.abstract | Smallholder is the major contributor to Indonesia's rubber production.
Unfortunately, the low productivity encourages farmers to cut rubber trees and
convert the land into more profitable, such as oil palm plantations. To overcome
the problem, rubber rejuvenation is necessary. However, it needs more capital
while low productivity leads to low income. The decline of income indirectly
indicates the low welfare level of smallholder rubber farmers. Indonesia
smallholder rubber farmer faces two main problems in developing the plantation,
those are unprofitable price and difficulty in accessing the capital for investment.
Rubber prices are related to the marketing channels used. Collector/toke as one of
traditional marketing channels generally tends to give price under the average and
unprofitable for smallholder farmers. Besides, the narrow land tenure, low
production, incomes, and asymmetrical information become farmer obstacles to
access credit from formal institutions. Cooperative as one of rubber agribusiness
institutions existing around rural society can become the solution to solve those
problems. Unfortunately, the smallholder farmer participation level in
cooperatives is still very low. Thus, it needs to analyze the effect of cooperatives
on the credit access choice and marketing channel used by smallholder rubber
farmers.
This research aims to find out: (1) the role of cooperative for smallholder
rubber in Indonesia, (2) the effect of smallholder rubber farmer participation in
cooperative on the credit access choice decision in Indonesia, (3) the effect of
smallholder rubber farmer participation in cooperative on natural rubber
marketing channel used in Indonesia. This research uses mix method in which the
quantitative approach used to show the statistical value of this research and the
qualitative approach is used to enrich the research explanation. The total sample
used is about 45,606 samples taken from plantation household survey (SKB
Data). The role of the cooperative is analyzed through descriptive statistics, while
the effect of smallholder rubber farmers' participation in cooperative on the
decision of credit access and marketing channel used analyzed by logistic
regression.
The result shows that: (1) Cooperative has four main roles for smallholder
rubber farmers, such as agricultural credit provider, production facilities,
processing product, and marketing channel. The majority of members utilize
cooperative as a marketing channel with the percentage is about 56% while 44%
prefer selling to other marketing channels. (2) The participation of smallholder
rubber farmers in cooperatives has a positive and significant effect on the decision
to access credit. Other factors that influence the decision to access credit are
education level, harvested area, income, costs, and marketing channel used. (3)
The participation of smallholder rubber farmers in cooperatives also has a positive
and significant effect on the decision to sell rubber through cooperative.
Accessing credit is another factor influencing that decision, while distance
perception is negative but significantly affecting the decision to sell through
cooperative. | en_US |
