The economies of scale of catfish pond culture in Banjar Regency, South Kalimantan

Abstract

Catfish pond culture in Banjar Regency has been widely practiced by fish-farmers from various scales of production, however, there was no study that shows comparison of which size is the most cost-effective. Therefore this study is needed to obtain the most cost-effective scale of production to start business with and in contrast to previous studies that only examined one economies of scale. The purpose of this study was to analyze the most cost-effective scale of production in catfish pond culture. The method used in this study is stratifying each scale of production in catfish pond culture. The data were collected by stratified random sampling. The investment criteria at each scale of production were used as the business feasibility analysis. The results showed that the large-scale production has the highest feasibility values (IRR 94,9), this was due to the amount of investments that was invested, and the good business management carried out by the owner based on his 25 years’ fish farming experience. The small-scale production (IRR 94,65) was ranked second in terms of feasibility compared to the medium-scale (IRR 93,9), this was because the small-scale production did not spend a lot of investment costs. In general, small-scale farmers do not incur investment costs for machinery and feed structures, and the ponds built by most respondents are soil-based ponds. The medium-scale production were spending more investment costs for the ponds construction, machinery and feed structures. In conclusion, based on their level of feasibility, the most cost-effective scale of production can be sorted as large, small and medium scale production.