Small-scale beef cattle production in East Java, Indonesia, is mostly undertaken to generate household income to meet current farm-household needs. This article presents research undertaken to understand the factors affecting the prices, hence the incomes, received by small-scale cattle producers in East Java. Research was conducted in two sites (one irrigated lowland and one rain-fed upland) in 2010-11, involving monthly monitoring with 184 farmers. Data was recorded for each of the 353 cattle sold during the two-year period. Cattle were sold in the village to local or district traders. The farm-gate price was regressed on six variables—liveweight, body condition score, cattle breed, age, reason for selling, and site. The age variable was omitted in the final model to avoid multi-collinearity. The estimated equation was significant and provided a good fit of the data (R2 = 0.77). The coefficients for all variables were positive and significant at the 5% level. The article concludes that buyer preferences and requirements are efficiently transmitted through traders to small-scale producers and expressed in farm-gate prices.

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