Difference in fertilizer usage and productivity of farmers’ using hybrid and composite maize seed

Indonesia still import maize for its domestic usage. In order to increase the maize production, the government has introduced hybrid maize seed. This study analyzes the difference between hybrid and composite maize seed in terms of productivity and fertilizer dosage. The study utilized secondary data from the Maize Household Survey in 2014 with the total of 80,116 respondents of maize farmers all over Indonesia. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) methods was utilized for this study. The results indicate that farmers using hybrid maize seed has higher productivity compare to farmers using composite maize seed. In addition, the highest use of fertilizer for farmers using hybrid maize seed is using urea and NPK with 11 percent of the farmers, meanwhile for farmers using composite maize seed 42 percent of the farmers did not use any fertilizers. This revealed that farmers using hybrid maize seed was more intensive farmers. From this study showed that the government must encourage farmers to utilized more hybrid maize seed since it has higher productivity, income and revenue. On the other hand, the government also has to decrease the price of hybrid maize seed in order to induced farmers to use the seed.