Agricultural Productivity in Indonesian Provinces

Indonesia has been recognized as a country with significant potential in agriculture, not only to be self-sufficient in terms of food, but also to be the “food basket” for the world. However, given limited and competing use of resources, raising agricultural productivity is of paramount importance. To date, most of the existing work on Indonesia's agricultural sector is at the national level. Considering the extent of Indonesia's regional diversity, a provincial-level analysis of the country's agricultural sector would be more useful from a policy perspective. In this light, this paper examines agricultural productivity growth in Indonesian provinces during 2000-2011 and draws policy implications from such empirical analysis. The paper uses two methodologies, namely growth accounting and Malmquist index data envelopment analysis. Results suggest that technological change has been improving for most provinces, though there is wide variation in technical efficiency change which in turn is driving differences in total factor productivity growth across provinces.