| Abstract | The main objective of this study was to identify suitable area for the crops planted in study area based on land suitability classes, to establish the present status of mechanization and to identify the farm mechanization potential in Sidenreng Rappang district, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The capabilities of GIS software packages (ARC/INFO) were applied to find suitability of land for the crops and potential level of mechanization for the study area. Thematic maps were digitized and were further analysed for assessment. Total geographic area of Sidrap district was 188,332 hectares of which 68,968 hectares was cultivated land. Total suitable areas (highly, moderately and marginally) for paddy, maize and cassava were found to be 62,296; 20,894 and 44,403 hectares respectively. For the mechanization it was found that 66,957 hectares of cultivated land can be mechanized using tractor and hand tractor. The average yield on irrigated farms was 3.25 ton per hectare comparet to 1.86 ton per hectare on rainfed farms. The buffalo-rainfed farmers had higher cost of cultivation than the irrigated land farmers. Because of the land hiring cost the sharecroppers had hirer cost of production. For hand tractor, the break even area (ha) was around 11 hectares per season and for power thresher it was 9 ton per season or equal to around 3 hectares per season. The number of tractors has declined from 326 units in 1982 to 22 units in 1998, mainly due to lack of spare parts. However the number of hand tractors increased from 2 to 1,533 units during the same period. At the present these are 1,533 hand tractors, 929 threshers and 219 pumps. Assuming that the sizes of hand tractor and thresher remain the same, the potential of mechanization in the study area was determined based on hand tractor-irrigated land, hand tractor-small irrigation scheme, hand tractor-pump irrigation and hand tractor/buffalo- rainfed land. The spatial coverages of these groups were estimated to be 33,375; 3,199; 7,726 and 18,657 hectares, respectively. Based on the paddy cultivated area and break even point, the total numbers of hand tractors and power threshers required were estimated to be 6,087 and 22,319 units, respectively. Considering with the pump irrigated area of 7, 726 hectares, the number of pumps were estimated to be 1, 731 units. |