Abstract

Tomohide Sugino

Regional autonomy was implemented in Indonesia since 2001, in which most of the authority including agricultural policies was delegated to the local governments. This study evaluated the quality of the agricultural policies in local governments using principal component analysis. The survey was conducted with the local agricultural offices in 89 regencies in Indonesia to collect data of the office budgets, number of office staff and diversity of policies. The survey results showed that there was significant disparity of office budgets, number of office staff and diversity of polices among the regions. Several regencies succeeded in improving the quality of agricultural policies, especially by increasing the diversity of policies. Considering the difficulty of increasing revenue and personnel under the severe economic conditions, the most realistic way to improve the quality of local agricultural policies was improvement of personnel performance of the local governments so that they could develop the innovative ideas based on local resources for agriculture development by optimally using local resources.