Judul: The level of economic efficiency and competitiveness of maize at dairi district, North Sumatra Province
Abstrak: Dairi District has potential maize farming that will increase maize production. The problem in maize farming is its low productivity because of its low efficiency of input use so that the competitiveness of maize farming is low. The objectives of this research are: (1) analyzing factors influencing maize production, analyzing economic efficiency of maize farm at Dairi District (2) analyzing maize farm competitiveness, (3) analyzing impact of input and output policy in maize farming competitiveness in Dairy District and (4) analyzing economic efficiency of maize farm effect to its competitiveness in Dairy District. The research methods are the Cobb Douglas stochastic frontier production function to analyze technical efficiency, the dual cost function to analyze allocative efficiency and the Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) to analyze maize farm competitiveness. This research used cross section data. The research findings showed that factors like seed and fertilizers (SP-36 and Phonska) were positive and statistically significant on maize production (level of significance at 5 %), urea and herbicide were also positive and significant on maize production (level of significance at 10 %). Meanwhile, labor positive but not significantly affected maize production. The efficiency analysis revealed that the maize farmers had economic inefficiency. The frequency of extension visits was substansial in technical inefficiency and it significantly increased technical efficiency. Maize production in Dairi District as a result from the PAM showed potentially had competitive as well as comparative advantages. PAM analysis also showed that input policies protected maize farmers, but output policy did not protect (help) maize farmers. The effect of efficiency to competitiveness analysis showed that the increase in allocative efficiency will increase the competitiveness of maize.
Keyword: Cobb Douglas stochastic frontier maize production, competitiveness, efficiency, maize farming

Judul: Rice farming efficiency in indonesia rice production central: stochastic metafrontier production function approach
Abstrak: Productivity and efficiency is needed to attain rice self sufficency. However, productivity at both national and provincial tends to be at leveling off level. This is closed related to technical, allocative, and economic efficiency as the main issues of this research. To answer these issues, this study aimed at analyzing rice production efficiency using stochastic metafrontier production and stochastic inefficiency frontier. This study utilized PATANAS data from PSE-KP. The number of observation was 592. The result imply that land and seed were very essential in every province while other input had various influence to production. All provinces had achieved high technical efficiency (more than 0.8 especially West Java more than 0.9). However, if it was compared with national potential, there was still technological gap which revealed that room to increase efficiency (28.84%) was still high. Quality of seed and land ownership status is very influential to efficiency. Almost all provinces got lower allocative efficiency than technical efficiency so that profit maximum couldn’t be reached. As policy implication, government need to support land expansion, seed innovation, irrigation system rehabilitation and to revise output and input price policy so that farmer welfare can be increased. Land expansion can be realized by increasing land rent access through land market policy and reducing the number of farmer as farm manager through making available of non farms job opportunity. Besides that, it is needed reorientation from production to profit oriented through minimum profit policy. Hence, rice self sufficiency can be maintained without push farmer welfare away. In very long run period, technology breakthrough especially in seed which adaptive for different season is very important.
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Judul: Posisi Filogenetik Kura-Kura Carettochelys Insculpta  (Reptillia: Testudinata)
Abstrak: Carettochelys insculpta is an endemic freshwater turtle of southern Papua and northern Australia. Phylogenetic position of this turtle is remain unresolved until now. Most of the research conducted show close relationships of C. insculpta and members of Trionychidae family. However, some of the research show distance between C. insculpta and members of Trionychidae family. This research is conducted to analyze phylogenetic relationship between C. insculpta and other members of Testudinata using 12S rRNA, 16S rRNA, and both gene as markers. DNA samples were obtained from three different organisms of C. insculpta. Two species used as outgroups were Alligator mississippiensis and Iguana iguana. Phylogenetic analysis was carried out using Neighbor-Joining method with Felsenstein 1981 (F81) modeltest. A polytomy tree of Testudinata was produced by using 12S rRNA gene. However, analysis using 16S rRNA and both genes as markers confirmed that C. insculpta was located between the Chelonidae and the Trionychidae family.
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