THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT POLICIES ON THE COMPETITIVENESS OF RICE FARMING IN PURBALINGGA REGENCY

Rice is a potential food crop to be developed in Purbalingga Regency, so it is necessary to know its competitiveness so that rice production can be improved. This study aims to (1) determine the competitiveness of rice farming in Purbalingga Regency, and (2) determine the impact of government policies on rice farming in Purbalingga Regency. It used the Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) as the research method. The research sample was purposively selected from Bukateja Subdistrict because it is the region with the highest rice production in Purbalingga Regency. It used the data of rice farming collected in two seasons, such as MT I (rainy season) and MT II (dry season) with a total sample of 80 rice farmers. The analysis shows that rice farming in Purbalingga Regency in MT I (rainy season) and MT II (dry season) had good level of competitiveness because they had competitive advantages and comparative advantages. The impact of government policies on rice farming output and input for both tradeable and non-tradeable inputs were significant. The government also had applied protective rice farming input-output policy. Based on this research, it is suggested that there is subsidy to improve irrigation networks and subsidy to purchase of modern inputs (agricultural machinery) to increase rice productivity and raise the competitiveness of rice farming in Purbalingga Regency as well as the government needs to maintaining the rice import tariff policy, determining the basic price of rice, and providing input subsidies such as chemical fertilizer.

. Thus, it is vital that the government designs policy as an effort to increase rice production in the country.
The largest rice production center areas in Indonesia are still in Java, this causes the consumption of Indonesian rice is still borne by the central rice production center which is concentrated in Java.
Central Java is one of the centers of rice production in Java with the number of rice farmers around 31.95% of the total farmers in Java. Purbalingga Regency as one of the rice-producing regions in Research on the competitiveness of rice farming has been widely carried out, but has not been further analyzed on the impact of government policies on agricultural competitiveness (Kikuchi et al., 2016;Suhardedi et al., 2017;Ugochukwu & Ezedinma, 2011). Research on the impact of government policies on the competitiveness of rice farming is very intriguing to study because so far the government has established various policies to help increase rice production in the country. Government policies that have been published to protect domestic producers are floor price and import tariff policies for rice. Policies are also made for tradable inputs for rice farming such as import tariffs, import taxes, and subsidies for farmers (Bowo et al., 2016). Every policy instrument formed by the government will lead to transfers between producers, consumers and the government (Pearson et al., 2004).     Table 1.

Purbalingga Regency
The results show that the majority

The average farmer in Purbalingga
Regency used 42 kg/ha of rice seeds, which was more than the recommendations given (± 20-25 kg/ha). Farmers tended to plant 3-4 rice seeds per plant hole.
According to Kumalasari et al. (2017), the use of a large number of seeds per plant tended to increase the competition between plants within one family and other families with light, space, and nutrients so that it affects growth and production. In addition, according to Muyassir (2012), the use of 1-2 seeds per clump will produce higher yields compared to the use of more than 2 seeds. Farmers used more seeds because of farmers' concerns from pests and diseases that will reduce production.       (Bordey, et al., 2016).
The rice farming in both MT I (rainy season) and MT II (dry season) were profitable both privately and socially. This is consistent with previous research (Rachman, 2011;Bowo et al., 2016;Suhardedi et al., 2017) where the value of private profits is higher than social profits. According to Rachman (2011), the difference in profit rate was caused by changes in seasons. Other research from Ugochukwu & Ezedinma (2011) Table 3. Table 3 According to Emelda et al. (2014), the lower the value of PCR, the higher the competitive advantage of the commodity.

Based on
On the other hand, the value of the Domestic Resource Cost Ratio (DRCR) in MT I (rainy season) and MT II (dry season) was less than one so that the farm has a comparative advantage. Table 3  farming. In addition, previous research by (Ugochukwu & Ezedinma, 2011;Ogbe et al., 2011;Kikuchi et al., 2016), said that rice farming has more competitiveness if it is planted on irrigated land.

Rice Farming in Purbalingga Regency
The government set various policies to improve rice production.   Input-output policy is a combined analysis of input policies and output policies from the government on farm inputs and outputs, which can be seen in Another input-output policy is the

Effective Protection Coefficient (EPC)
which is an indicator that shows the  (Bordey, et al. (2016), in Philippine that still protect their food crops especially rice.