Assessing Rice Prices Through the Labour of Female Farm Workers

In the last five years, consumer rice prices have continued to rise. According to BPS, throughout 2024 the average annual price rose by 6% to reach Rp15,308 per kilogram for medium quality. This price increase is often seen as good news for farmers. However, the welfare of farm workers, especially women, has become increasingly precarious. According to BPS, national rice production has declined by about 0.18% per year, although in 2025 it rose again, stimulated by policies towards self-sufficiency in rice. On the other hand, national rice demand has grown by 0.8% per year. The gap between supply and demand pushes prices higher. But this applies only at the downstream node of the rice market supply chain. The increases occur more on the downstream side due to the cascading effects of distribution and the weak bargaining position upstream. This is clearly an irony in our food system: prices are high for consumers, low for farmers, and farm workers’ wages do not rise, especially for female workers. A key part of the food production process is that female rice farmers are a crucial part of the production, and their contributions are often unseen and not fully recognised in policy or protection schemes. Female farm workers undertake essential work from planting to harvest, paid with lower wages on a daily basis and without adequate social protection. When rice prices rise, their wages do not rise. They are highly dependent on the rice fields. Rice production is constrained by land conversion and extreme weather. The conversion of paddy land to non-agricultural areas continues, especially in Java, Bali, and Lombok. Existing regulations are not fully effective in controlling conversion of paddy land, particularly in peri-urban areas facing infrastructure, industrial and housing development. These processes reduce the extent of raw paddy land and fragment land, lowering farming efficiency and irrigation management. This has wide-ranging impacts, including reduced employment opportunities for female farm workers who depend on planting and harvesting seasons. Our study led by Dr Yanti N Muflikh, in collaboration with The University of Queensland, BRIN, UGM, UMY, Parti Gastronomi, and CHIPS through the MyIndah Diet–KONEKSI 2025 GEDSI-based project, found that development pressure has deepened economic vulnerability while increasing the workload on women in the food system. Climate change causes unstable cropping seasons, with shifts in the start of the rainy season and higher frequencies of floods, droughts, and pests, raising the risk of crop failure, inflating production costs, and reducing productivity. Farmers face rising risk of losses; for farm workers, changes create severe vulnerability as they depend solely on rice production. Older female farm workers are particularly vulnerable due to their dependence on day labour without asset reserves. To maintain domestic supply, the government relies on imports; over the past five years rice imports rose by around 65% per year, with 2024 imports reaching 4.5 million tonnes, a striking figure for an economy that claims to be a rice producer, though in 2025 consumption imports were reportedly halted. Nevertheless, rice import policy can help price stability and consumer affordability, but it can also depress farmers’ incomes and reduce incentives, especially for female farmers. While the policy direction toward self-sufficiency is commendable, without inclusive attention to female farm workers who are the backbone of rice production, policy towards self-sufficiency may remain a dream. A comprehensive and inclusive understanding of female workers’ issues can help address them; most work on daily wages and are detached from rice price dynamics. Rising rice prices do not translate into higher earnings for them. Rural female farm workers are diminishing as younger women are drawn to manufacturing or migrate. The double burden: as consumers they pay high prices for rice, while as workers they do not see higher incomes. They are also squeezed by rising input costs not matched by the price of their harvested paddy. Market power imbalances and weak social protection leave female farm workers increasingly vulnerable to price shocks and production uncertainty; when prices fall or harvest fails, this quickly becomes a crisis for them. These conditions drive farm worker households to tighten spending as a survival strategy.