An accurate assessment tool based on intelligent technique for suitability of soybean cropland: case study in Kebumen Regency, Indonesia

In the last few years, the decrease in the land use of soybean affected the reduced of soybean production. Land suitability assessment is an effort to increase the soybean production since the manual method was less accurate. This study aims to apply fuzzy sets and AHP to improve the accuracy of the assessment process of land suitability for soybean crops. The value of five sub-criteria converted into fuzzy sets for standardization process. The weighting by AHP performed to determine the importance level of sub-criteria. Suitability index and final land suitability classes were obtained from the calculation of the fuzzy membership function values and the weights of each sub-criteria before being overlaid with spatial data to produce land suitability map for soybeans. The results of this work showed that 81.42% of the total area was moderate suitability (S2), 11.25% was marginally suitable (S3) and of 7.33% was not suitable (N). From the results of land suitability assessment for soybean crops has been tested and has good correlation with the yield conditions. This study showed that the proposed tool based on Fuzzy sets and AHP were accurate to assess the land suitability of soybean and can be used as the basis for agricultural planning to optimize the land use and soybean production.