<![CDATA[Musi Rawas Regency is one of the food granaries in South Sumatra Province, experiencing a rice surplus in 2023. Nevertheless, this region has faced a significant downward trend in lowland rice production since 2020 due to various external factors. This study aims to examine land conditions and evaluate the effectiveness of production factors to formulate optimization strategies for lowland rice. The research method utilized a spatial approach to map agroecological conditions, combined with a survey method involving 228 respondent farmers, and was analyzed using the Cobb-Douglas production function. The results showed that simultaneously, all input variables could explain 97.65% of the variation in production, indicating a condition of Increasing Returns to Scale (IRS). Partially, only land area and labor had a positive and significant effect on crop yields. Factors such as seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation had a positive but insignificant effect due to suboptimal application rates (below recommended doses) and dysfunction in macro-level water management. The lowland rice ecosystem in this region faces degradation challenges and irrigation water distribution conflicts, which trigger a high extent of fallow land. It is concluded that optimization strategies can no longer focus on the intensification of synthetic chemical inputs; instead, they must synergize the recalibration of input doses through a precise Low-External-Input Technology (LEIT) approach with the enforcement of equitable spatial water governance across sectors.]]>
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