Smallholder Cattle Development in Indonesia: Learning from the Past for an Outcome-Oriented Development Model

Cattle play significant roles for smallholder farmers as a source of income [4, 11, 12], savings that can be cashed immediately, buffering household economy during harvest failure, insurance, food, and fertilizer [11]. Beef cattle farming systems commonly found in Indonesia include three systems, intensive, semi-intensive, and extensive [13, 14]. Each of these systems will be discussed in more detail below where the intensive system focusses on how this system integrate well in crop-based areas and to adjust with land limitation while the other two systems are generally found in less populated areas relying greatly on nature as source of feed.

2.1 Intensive cut-and-carry feeding system

Cattle-raising management under an intensive cut-and-carry system is generally indicated by two most common features, landless/limited land and crop-based. This system is mainly found in densely populated areas where intensive crop farming plays significant roles as a source of living, such as in Java, Lombok, and some other parts of Indonesia. Farmers rely heavily on crop by-products to feed their cattle [4, 15, 16]. Farmers plant improved grass in rice bunds, backyards, or roadsides [17]. Landless cattle farmers collect feed from communal areas such as river banks, roadsides, irrigation channels, rice bunds, and forests [18-22]. Other farmers purchase fodder to overcome feed scarcity problems, especially during the dry season. The cut-and-carry cattle farming system is also implemented on other islands of Indonesia with more extensive land ownership, such as Sumatera, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, and Timor Island.

However, these cattle do not necessarily belong to farmers. The majority of cattle farmers in Java and Lombok manage others' cattle in a profit-sharing scheme, profit sharing in fattening enterprise or getting calves in turn for production [23, 24]. In Lombok, for example, one of the essential beef cattle pockets in Indonesia, more than 60% of cattle farmers manage someone else's cattle. Some farmers prefer to manage others' cattle to restrain selling temptation. Farmers tend to sell cattle more quickly when they own it while trying to keep it when it belongs to someone else.

Moreover, limited capital has hampered these peasant farmers from owning cattle. Although small-scale credit scheme for cattle farming has been available in the last five years, farmers still need more access to credit. Among hindering factors include no/lack of collateral, fears of losing collateral due to being unable to pay back the loan, and lack of information [25]. Hence, farmers must boldly take bank credit to establish and develop their cattle enterprise.

The advantages of intensive cut-and-carry cattle farming system include efficient land use, feeding, control, handling and enabling waste use for compost to support farming in a mixed crop-livestock systems [26, 27]. Nonetheless, this system requires higher farming capital, labour and infrastructure for housing and waste management. Some pockets of farmer groups have shown that innovation uptake on improved cattle management has enhanced their farming productivity. Unfortunatley, the innovation spread has been limited due to varying factors including lack of awareness, limited access to information and limited access to inputs as pre-requirement to implement the innovations.

2.2 Semi-intensive farming system

This system is understood when cattle are left freely grazing but farmers still control the animal in certain period of time. Semi-intensive system may be in the form of raising cattle in tethered and moved mode, integrated cattle grazing with food crop cultivation or with estate crop plantation. This system is commonly found outside Java with sufficient land to herd cattle such as Sumatera, Kalimantan, West and East Nusa Tenggara and generally integrated with crops or estate crop plantations. At the same time, the other 31.82% and 22.73% raise cattle in extensive and intensive systems, respectively, with average cattle ownership ranging from 1-3 head per household. In Nusa Tenggara, integration with food crops cultivation mostly practiced by grazing cattle herds after food crop harvest (corn or rice), while tethered and moved mode is generally practiced in Timor Island. In tethered and moved mode cattle are tethered using a relative long rope in the morning which will give chance for cattle to graze and be moved in the afternoon depend on the availability of feed.

Integration of beef farming and crops or estate crop plantation in a semi-intensive system provides an excellent opportunity for beef development, especially for scale expansion owing to its potency as a feed source. It contributes to 85.8% of farmer household income [28]. With a total oil palm plantation of 14.663.600 ha [29], this system could support another 23.461.760 more cattle in Indonesia. Reciprocally, cattle can reduce costs for weeding and fertilizing plantations [30].

Amidst the incredible potency of a semi-intensive system for beef cattle development in Indonesia, challenges remain related to production, reproduction, farmer human resource, and access to inputs and services. The advantage of a semi-intensive cattle rearing system is that it can reduce feed costs when cattle are grazing, and reduce labor to raise livestock for other productive activities. On the other hand, the disadvantage is that farmers still have to provide quality feed to meet their nutritional needs [31-33]. Unfortunately, most farmers only provide forage, leading to low productivity.

Low production rates are characterized by slow growth due to quality feed insufficiency, especially in the dry season, long calving intervals, and high calf mortality rates have been classical problems. According to study [34], reproductive management significantly correlates to farmers' income, accounted for more than 80%, meaning that poor reproductive management will result in farmers large losses [35]. If the farmer's income is only enough for his family's living expenses, then the fulfillment for cattle needs is decreasing, resulting in low cattle productivity. Bremer et al. [36] argue that the palm oil-cattle integration system is complicated for smallholders due to limited land and free grazing practices. Grazing cattle tend to be uncontrolled due to labor shortage and confined within individual farmers' land, which needs to be improved to meet cattle nutrition requirements. Therefore, efforts and regulations are required to enable land access for semi-grazing cattle.

Meanwhile, reproduction issues are still tantamount to cattle development in Indonesia. A similar condition was found in Sumbawa Island of WNT, where mature good bulls are usually sold first for emergency cash needs leading to degraded bull quality and inbreeding. Unfortunately, this issue has been overlooked. Instead of optimizing the high reproduction trait of Bali cattle using natural mating of quality bulls, the development programs have put more attention into artificial insemination. This problem will be discussed further in the section on cattle development programs in Indonesia.

2.3 Extensive grazing system

The extensive grazing system is cattle farming with minor human intervention and relies significantly on nature as a source of feed [37]. In the extensive grazing system, cattle can be left freely during the daytime, returned to crush yards at night, or grazed throughout the year. Dutch introduced cattle in Nusa Tenggara of Indonesia as part of the colonial government's ethical policy. Bali cattle were introduced first on Timor Island in 1912, Ongole cattle to Sumba Island, and Madura cattle on Flores Island in 1909 - 1915 [38], as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Historical events of Bali cattle development in West Timor

Source: Adapted from Ngongo

Among the three cattle types mentioned above, Bali cattle are considered the most productive cattle. They have relatively better productivity and endurance in their genetic condition without being crossed [39]. Bali cattle became the primary commodity exported from Timor to Hong Kong and Singapore until the 1960s, after which domestic demand, primarily from Java, dominated cattle marketing. Since then, Bali cattle in Timor have become the primary source of cash income for most farmers in Timor.

The fast increase in the Bali cattle population combined with extensive free grazing system in Timor, however, has also brought negative consequences to the fragile semi-arid ecosystem of Timor i.e., increasing overgrazed areas of native pastures and damage to the forest areas. Previous study argues that the extensive areas of secondary vegetation and grassland in ENT, particularly in Sumba and Timor, reflect widespread deforestation from shifting cultivation and poorly managed livestock grazing pressure, which was subject to improvement [40]. Low and short rainfall, as the nature of the semi-arid environment, limited sufficient forage availability, which is also not supporting the fast increase of the Bali cattle population. Farmers' responses to control the Lantana camara by burning it in pastureland and providing new and palatable grass have further deteriorated the savannah environment.

In response to providing forages for cattle and at the same time, improving the soil fertility/environment, the Dutch colonial introduced Lamtoro (Leucaena leucocephala), which the program was extended after the independent era so-called ''lamtoronisasi" [10, 41], and the land of a million cattle (Bumi Sejuta Sapi), cattle-castor tree-sea weed (PIJAR), and maize-Leucaena-cattle (JALAPI) programs in WNT. Forage development, particularly Leucaena, received significant external (Australia) input of research and aid, The psyllid resistance cultivar (Leucaena leucocephala cv. Taramba) has improved forage availability, and it has made a significant contribution to improving cattle performance and farmers' income in Timor and eastern Indonesia in general [42] as well as contributing to reducing the pressure to the native grasslands.

The advantage of an extensive cattle farming system labour and cost efficient for providing feed and supervising livestock, while livestock waste can fertilize the grazing land. Conversely, the disadvantage is that it requires large areas, higher risk of contracting disease as compared to intensive system, higher risk of inbreeding makes it difficult to obtain good livestock genetics, and risks of theft and natural disaster [43, 44].

The impact and response of cattle farming households to the economic fluctuations of each system is quite different. Households running intensive cattle farming experience a greater impact if there are economic fluctuations in cattle agribusiness, especially to cattle price, than semi-intensive or extensive systems. This is because (1) intensive system farmers incur greater input costs, hence price fluctuations both on input prices and cattle selling prices will lead to significant impact to household economy; (2) intensive systems generally put cattle as main source of household income, while the semi-intensive and extensive systemsusually have other sources of income as a buffer for household economic resilience. Households with intensive systems are more prone to economic fluctuations. They tend to be strichter in following the business calendar. Often they continue selling cattle even prices fall for costs maintenance only. Conversely, households running semi-intensive or extensive cattle systems do not sell cattle during low prices, unless households need cash to meet current needs. Thus, if there are economic fluctuations, especially price changes, semi-intensive and extensive business systems are more resilience than intensive systems.

Looking at the current conditions of cattle farming in Indonesia which is dominated by smallholder farmers in various systems as described in Section 1 and learning from the ups and downs of previous national and regional cattle development programs, a reflection should be made for the following and future development programs. Most cattle development programs aim to improve productivity first and subsequently to improve farmers' livelihood, which also means covering biophysical and human components involved in cattle enterprise. This section discusses critical components to support cattle development programs in Indonesia to achieve more significant opportunities for sustainable impacts. These include feed and feeding, reproduction, animal health management, and economic and human components.

4.1 Feed and feeding management

Feed and feeding management determine 70% of cattle farming performance [40]. This condition is exacerbated because Indonesia lies in a tropical region with a long dry season, causing a fast decrease in forage quality in some cattle pocket’s areas such as WNT and ENT. At the same time, potential feed sources such as crops and estate crop by-products are available abundantly yet underutilized in many parts of the country. This section will explore key factors attributable to cattle development in Indonesia from the feed source and availability perspective, available innovations, and production capacity. On the one hand, an extensive grazing system allows cheap cattle production yet has low productivity influenced by the bio-physical quality of the grazing area, duration in accessing grazing land, and rotational grazing [54-56]. On the other hand, an intensive cut-and-carry system has shown sufficient nutrient provision by farmers but has limitations on farm scale expansion. Therefore, this discussion is also about feeding strategies and practice changes needed across different cattle farming systems that enable sustainable development, as indicated by improved productivity and farmers' livelihood.

Indonesia has different cattle feed sources across the three different framing systems. The extensive system relies on nature as the primary feed source for grazing cattle. For example, average fresh forage production in grazing areas in Western Indonesia accounts for 2.87 tons/ha during the wet season compared to 2.31 tons/ha during the dry season [57]. While in the Eastern part of Indonesia, it is 5.35 tons/ha during the wet season as opposed to only 1.39 tons/ha during the dry season [58]. In regards to vegetation, grazing land in Western Indonesia is dominated by grasses of Brachiaria decumbens, Cynodon plectostachyus, Panicum maximum, and legumes of Centrocema pubescent, Stylosantes guyanensis [57].

Meanwhile, a semi-intensive system gathers forages from the grazing and crop farming areas. This system is characterized by introducing various improved grasses and legumes adaptable to local conditions. Farmers plant fodder for labor savings and conserve feed in simple methods whenever needed. According to Stür et al. [59], labor-saving is a major driving factor for adoption in animal feed innovations. Among the preferred improved grasses include Elephant Grass (Pennisetum purpureum), Odot grass (Pennisetum purpureum cv. Mott), King Grass (Pennisetum purpupoides): Legum Stylo (Stylosanthes guianensis), Legum Centro (Centrosema pubescens) [60-65].

On the other hand, since intensive smallholder cattle farming is primarily integrated with crop farming, some primary feed sources in this system include rice straw [66-68]. Utilization of crops by-products as cattle feed provides a great potency to enhance farmers' ability to expand farm size, as shown in Table 2, which will lead to increased cattle population. Table 2 shows the production of several crops by-products in Indonesia and their potency to support cattle farming.

In the intensive cattle farming system, farmers start recognizing innovations for feed management to improve productivity, such as silage, hay, and mineral blocks. Several studies have shown that feed treatment improved feed quality and digestibility. Ammoniated rice straw supplemented by legumes improves rumen microbes and increases the degradability of xylose, galactose, and mannose by diluting hemicellulose partially, hence increasing rice straw intake [69, 70]. Meanwhile, maize straw and Stylosanthes silage in 50%: 50% composition is an alternative for beef cattle [71]. Moreover, urea molasses block supplementation in grazing areas improves the digestibility of; maize straw [72, 73].

4.2 Strategies to overcome feed scarcity

Feed scarcity is a chronic problem that impedes cattle production, productivity, and hence population in Indonesia [68]. Amidst this challenge, the integrated crop-cattle farming system commonly practiced by most smallholder farmers in Indonesia provides an excellent opportunity to overcome this problem. An integrated crop-livestock system is a promising option for achieving sustainable farming objectives for economic and environmental benefits [74-77]. Limited conventional feed sources can be overcome by utilizing crops by-products in simple, concentrated, or complete feed. Rice is Indonesia's main crop that, produces 77% rice straw and 10% rice bran out of the total production as a potential feed source [78]. Additionally, cassava starch or coconut meal are other potential available feed that can be added to the ration [79, 80].

Crops by-products such as cattle feed are available nationwide, as shown in Table 2. This Table depicts East Java as the highest crop by-products producer, followed by Central Java, West Java, South Sulawesi, and Lampung. This potential feed availability reflects feed support for further cattle development in Indonesia, which can be projected using the Feed Concentration Index (FCI). Table 2 indicates that merely utilizing crop by-products as cattle feed will support up to 31,8 million cattle, which means an open space to expand the population for another 18 million cattle on top of Indonesia's current 13.8 million cattle population. The province with the highest FCI has a more significant opportunity to expand the cattle population under the integrated crop-cattle farming system.

Despite the abundant crop by-products availability, this potency still needs to be utilized. Farmers still burnout maize and rice straws in many parts of Indonesia. Reasons often mention saving labor for the next crop planting round, not knowing it is cattle feed and lack of infrastructure to conserve it. This condition indicates two implications for optimizing crop residue as cattle feed. First is improving farmers' knowledge and skills, which will be discussed in the section on farmer human resources, and the second is the consequences of such practice that need to be addressed. Smallholder farmers require options for increasing the quantity and quality of forages in livestock diets. However, these options need to be integrated with current food-production systems rather than replacing them. In particular, new forage or feed systems must complement, rather than compete with, important staple grain crops such as rice and maize [81].

4.3 Animal health and reproduction management

4.3.1 Animal health management

Animal health management plays another critical role in a productive cattle enterprise. Cattle farming can increase farmers' economic income and reduce poverty. A study shows that high-productivity cattle also incur more healthcare expenses [82]. However, these costs are still compatible compared to the impacts caused by disease infection and outbreak [83]. Meanwhile, asymptomatic diseases resulting from nutritional deficiencies can lead to decreased productivity and poor reproduction performance in cattle [84].

Furthermore, calves from infected cows will experience slowed growth, delayed sexual maturity, and decreased milk production [85]. Infection with bacteria, viruses, and fungi causes high mortality in calves within the first 48 hours of life [86]. Given the significant economic loss due to diseases, cattle health management is inevitable to reduce morbidity and mortality [87]. Understanding and practice of cattle health management vary among smallholder farmers in Indonesia.

Indonesia currently has 18,053,710 beef cattle kept by approximately 5,736,153 farmers in 7,230 sub-districts [88-90], meaning that 2,410 PUSKESWAN are needed. There are currently 2124 PUSKESWAN across Indonesia. Apart from medical veterinarians, there are also livestock extension workers at the ground level to support smallholder cattle farmers and deliver information on good cattle management practices. Unfortunately, their number is far from sufficient. To put this into context, East Java Province, with 3,424,270 cattle farmers, only has 216 livestock extension workers [89], which means only 3.53% of farmers receive extension services. This condition illustrates the urgent need for these staff to facilitate farmers in developing their knowledge and skills in beef cattle management for improved productivity and livelihood.

The extensive system accelerates the spread of Septicaemia Epizooticae (SE) and Gastrointestinal Parasites. Therefore, it is necessary to control the spread of infectious diseases in groups or regions, not individually [91]. Based on identifying intensive, semi-intensive, and extensive maintenance systems, the government must create a map and designate it as a cattle breeding area prone to contracting and spreading disease. These crucial factors are anticipated to receive prompt attention to combat infectious diseases. Vaccination can control infectious diseases [92]. According to Tago et al. [93], losses due to infectious diseases can be prevented or slowed by implementing a distance restriction zone if vaccination is unavailable. The government can also control infectious diseases by identifying the structure of the traditional beef cattle trade network susceptible to infectious disease transmission [93, 94].

4.3.2 Reproduction management

Reproduction management is another key to productive beef cattle enterprise, especially in breeding. The beef cattle production cycle generally consists of mating, gestation, calf birth, nursing, weaning, and feedlot/backgrounding until the beef cattle are ready for market. From this cycle, reproduction is essential to beef cattle production's success. The birth of calves in production cycles is essential for producing sires and bulls for meat production. Reproduction failure is a common cause of declining beef cattle populations [95]. Therefore, reproduction efficiency is one of the keys to increasing profits in the cattle business [96].

The implementation of reproduction management in Indonesia is also hampered by reproduction disorders which range from 11-57% [97]. This high range of reproduction disorder hinders population development in Indonesia and causes enormous economic losses for farmers. Research in 2018 in South Sumatra Province reported reproductive disorders, including ovarian hypofunction, endometritis, pyometra, ovarian cysts, silent heat, villitis, vaginitis, and fetal mummification [98]. Meanwhile, the most common reproductive disorders found across Indonesia were ovarian hypofunction and repeated breeding [99-101]. In general, the main cause of reproductive disorders is insufficient feed, both in terms of quantity and nutritional quality. Unbalanced nutrition, especially when the cow is experiencing a severe phase of the reproduction cycle, such as pregnancy or lactation, is the leading cause of this reproduction disorder. When dry matter intake does not meet energy needs, a negative energy balance occurs, which affects reproduction activity [102]. This condition is common in smallholder farms, especially cattle without supplemental feed [103]. Other causes of reproductive disorders are limitations in farmers' knowledge, postnatal care, veterinarians, the number of livestock health facilities [98], sanitation and biosecurity.

Based on the current reproduction management in smallholder cattle farms in Indonesia, a strategy is needed to accelerate the increase in cattle population. The most crucial factor in reproduction management is mating management to produce calves. Therefore, appropriate reproduction innovation interventions supported by government policies can significantly improve reproduction management. Since the main problem of reproductive disorders correlates with feed insufficiency, it is necessary to implement a feeding strategy to increase the reproductive performance of cows [104]. The three main strategies that can be implemented are: (1) to implement a mating calendar where a late gestation period coincides with an increased forage availability time; (2) to wean calves at a decreased forage availability time to reduce cow's burden and allow correcting their body condition for the next reproduction cycle; (3) and to implement tactical feeding which is providing high-quality feed for weaned calves and low-quality feed such as rice straw for empty cows. This strategy can be combined with the application of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) such as estrus synchronization and AI.

The mating system in a smallholder cattle farm in Indonesia generally uses bulls owned by farmers or AI [105]. The implementation of AI provides more benefits by controlling both interbreeding and inbreeding. However, in general, the implementation of AI is also constrained by farmers' need for knowledge regarding estrus detection and the uneven distribution of facilities and infrastructure to support AI in Indonesia. Under these conditions, then natural mating is more profitable [106].

Frozen semen distribution has been a challenge in Indonesia since production is mainly concentrated in the island of Java. There are two main insemination centers in Java owned by the central government: Lembang Artificial Insemination Center and Singosari National Artificial Insemination Center (SNAIC). The remainders are smaller in scale owned by local governments and private sector. These conditions make AI outside Java become challenging to implement. The costs will be more expensive due to distribution and maintenance costs of frozen semen. Apart from that, the presence of inseminator officers is not evenly distributed across the archipelago. Therefore, the proposed solutions to this condition are: 1) The government needs to encourage private companies that produce frozen semen; 2) The government needs to develop certified AI centers in each region; 3) The government needs to increase the number of inseminator officers in cattle farming areas throughout Indonesia.

Meanwhile, sperm sexing is necessary to produce beef cattle of a particular sex. Sexed semen in cattle refers to semen that has been processed to separate and collect sperm based on their sex chromosomes, specifically the X and Y chromosomes. This technology allows for more controlled breeding, allowing farmers and breeders to choose the sex of the calves: males for fattening and females for breeding. Frozen semen from sex has been produced by SNAIC and has been distributed throughout Indonesia [107]. Even though the price of frozen semen from sexing is more expensive than regular frozen semen, it is still affordable for small breeders for government generally subsidy. There are no national reports regarding the success of sperm sexing in Indonesia. While the technology has advanced, the success rates of sexed semen are not 100%. The accuracy of sex selection can vary depending on breed and the sexing method. On a research scale, the success of separating spermatozoa to produce male calves in SNAIC was reported to be more than 90% in the Simental crossbred [107] and 78% in the Ongole crossbred [108]. Male calves are more economically profitable for smallholder beef cattle farmers than females because they have a higher selling value.

4.4 Social and economic aspects

The social-economic aspect is another vital element in achieving productive and profitable cattle farming. Hence, understanding this aspect is crucial to develop smallholder cattle farming with diverse social and economic conditions in Indonesia. Smallholder cattle farming is an integrated farming business with other farming enterprises such as food crops, horticulture, estate crops, and other livestock enterprises. For example, cattle farming is integrated with food crops in Java, North Sulawesi, Bali, and West Nusa Tenggara, with oil palm in Sumatra and Kalimantan, with estate crops in East Nusa Tenggara, Southern Sulawesi, and Papua. However, this multi-commodity farming is still spatial and has yet to reach the Integrated Farming System (IFS) stage, indicated by the realization of zero waste.

Farmers generally have two main objectives in rearing cattle, production, and investment objective. The production objective is to earn capital from cattle sales, contributing to household total income to meet family needs. On the other hand, an investment objective is intended as capital that can be used anytime for other purposes such as children's schooling, building houses, and social and cultural needs expenditure. Farmers' decision to sell cattle is influenced by several factors, depending on the economic level of the farmer and business orientation. When farmers need cash for school fees or social expenditures (burial, marriages, and other cultural ceremonies), cattle will usually be sold to meet these needs regardless of prices. In cattle marketing, four marketing patterns are commonly found across the country, as described in Figure 1. They are (a) farmers sell directly at the farm gate with buyers coming to collect; (b) farmers sell cattle to the slaughterhouse; (c) farmers sell cattle in livestock markets, and (d) farmers sell cattle to other farmers.

1.png

Figure 1. The flow of cattle farming and marketing at the household level in Indonesia

Source: primary data, analyzed

Some farmers prefer selling cattle at the farm gate for several advantages, including minimum transportation costs, less risk for unsold cattle, and saving time for other activities. However, this option also comes with disadvantages as buyers generally dominate price deals, especially when farmers are in a needing position for unavoidable circumstances. Through the procurement process, collectors will sell cattle to inter-island traders, slaughterhouses, other farmers, and the government and NGOs. Meanwhile, selling cattle to livestock markets has advantages such as direct access to market price information.

Regarding capital availability for cattle enterprise, smallholder farmers are characterized by low capital owned with varying features in access to banks or other capital sources. Extensive cattle farmers have less access to banks than their semi-intensive counterparts. Farmers with extensive systems even can access capital from various sources such as banks, cooperatives, and moneylenders. This relates to their business turnover as bank/lender considerations in providing credit. Accessing Bank for some farmers can take much work for its formal requirements and processes. Hence, despite the higher interest, they prefer another source like cooperatives with more familiar and visiting staff. In the future, cattle business development needs to be supported by cheap and easily accessible financing schemes for farmers. This policy's implementation is expected to positively impact beef production by reducing feed, feeder, and distribution costs [74].

This paper aims to review and recommend a model for smallholder cattle development in Indonesia by considering varying bio-physical potency and social and institutional conditions to achieve sustainable outcomes. This paper found three main cattle farming systems closely related to crops farming systems, land availability, and agroecological conditions in the respective regions. The intensive cut-and-carry feeding system is usually practiced in densely populated regions with irrigated land where farmers count on crops by-products as a feed source. Meanwhile, a semi-intensive system is usually practiced where cattle are needed to graze crops residue after harvest in upland areas or graze underneath estate crop plantations. Farmers still still take controll by putting cattle in pen for a certain period. Finally, the extensive system is found where grazing land is still available sufficiently to graze cattle throughout the year with minor intervention from farmers. Across all the cattle farming systems, feed scarcity especially during dry season, reproduction and health problems, and socio-human resistance for innovation uptake to improve cattle productivity are still the main hinderance for cattle development in Indonesia. At the same time, feed source from crops byproducts like rice and maize are availbale abundanty during harvest season. The main challenge in utilising these by products include labour availability to harvest, process and store it. Hence, simple mechanisation for these processes would be significant to ensure feed availability througout the year.

A number of cattle development programs has been launched by the Indonesia Government to boost cattle population and productivity. This oaoer asseses their achievements and pitfalls. The claimed achivements were reportedly unsutainabke and unclear in other studies. Meanwhile this paper identifies their drawbacks including unclear operational guidelines leading to varying operational implementation; top-down approach of one-size-fits-all overlooking diverse bio-physical and socio-economic conditions across the nation which leads to uneffective program due to insuitabilty, and weak monitoring and evaluation systems that leave program implementation without feedback loop mechanism to improve any weaknesses.

Therefore, this paper proposed models for smallholder cattle development under an intensive system in Indonesia with four main pillars: individual and institutional capacity development that put farmers' development as a foundation, then feeding, reproduction, and health management as another equally important pilars. Operationalization of this model is flexible for the respected system to suit existing local conditions. Meanwhile, its implemnetation lies on the farmers’ capacity strengthening as the underpinning foundation to identify problems and opportunity which then lead to practice changes related to the other three pilars. Hence, future cattle development programs by the Government of Indonesia and other development agents are expected to consider those four pillars strengthening. Beef cattle development programs need to be targeted for specific regions that provide a greater possibility of success. The three cattle farming systems cannot negate one to each other for their respective advantage that one system can support the other one. An extensive system, for example, can produce breeder and feeder cattle for intensive ones. Therefore, developing all types of cattle farming systems must be done simultaneously. Special efforts are needed in feed quality and improvement of grazing areas, innovation interventions for bio-physical and socio-economic aspects, fostering local regulations to support cattle development programs, and strengthening animal health and extension services.

While this paper insights on achievementts and pitfalls of cattle developement in Indonesia that can be a reference for future similar programs, we also acknowledge some limitations of this study. As this desk study rely on documents, reports and previous studys as main source of data, the proposed recommenadations are not tested and piloted yet under field conditions. Therefore, it provides avenue for future research. Reserach questions such as how can cattle production and reproduction, and the livelihoods of smallholder farmerss, be improved within the constraints and opportunities of crop-based farming systems? How can efficient cattle production systems be scaled out in different settings? How can government programs be improved to support cattle and smallholder farmers develeopment across the nation? Are among reaserch questions that need to be asnwered in the future reserach.