Buffalo driven out by hand tillers

Buffalo driven out by hand tillers

By Hartono Hadikusumo

YOGYAKARTA (JP): As a primary school student during the early
1960s, my attention was always drawn to the back covers of my
textbooks. On the back of these school books was always a picture
of a farmer behind a plow pulled by a buffalo team. Below this
picture was written: Siapa Menanam Mengetam (He who sows reaps).
In third grade I already knew the moral behind these words: If
you want something, you must work for it. But it was not the
moral that occupied my mind every time I looked at the picture.
Instead, it was the picture of the idyllic village life; a life
that was peaceful and unhurried, free of the hustle and bustle of
the city.

The picture always conjured visions of a village boy lolling
in the shade on the back of his buffalo, blowing his bamboo
flute, while in the bush a tiger lay waiting, not daring to show
himself for fear of the buffalo's sharp horns. In the 1960s this
scene might have been common in several outlying areas of
Yogyakarta, like Gunung Kidul, Kulonprogo and the foot of Mount
Merapi. The tigers, however, have long since become extinct.

Unfortunately, the time may have also come for the buffalo and
other animals to vanish onto the pages of Indonesian history
books. The signs are already here. Modernization has come to
farms in the form of compact, sturdy and dependable Japanese made
hand tillers. These handy machines were first introduced to the
rice paddies in the 1970s, and have now become almost as
ubiquitous as the buffalo.

The sight of a farmer maneuvering a hand tiller around a paddy
field has become commonplace in rural areas. The introduction of
hand tillers into village life followed the use of rice huskers.
In the old days the rhythmical thumping of an alu (wooden
pounder) could be heard pounding rice in the lesung (wooden rice
bowl). The alu and lesung are now rare. Nowadays the growl of a
diesel engine powering a rice husker or miller, commonly called a
huller, is the norm. The bellowing and mooing of buffalo and ox
are increasingly being droned out by the sound of hand tillers
plowing paddy fields.

It is not uncommon to see animals and hand tillers working
together in rural areas. Both the animals and the hand tillers
are either owned or rented. On a 20 hectare filed I observed two
teams of buffalo, four teams of oxen and two tillers. With this
ratio, hand tillers are now almost as ubiquitous as buffalo. One
morning in Vanden village near Yogyakarta, I encountered four
tillers, two working in the fields and two on the road being
driven to other work locations.

The farmers are familiar with the hand tiller's benefits. The
machines are more efficient, faster and cheaper compared to
buffalo or oxen. For a full complement of animal assisted
farming, a farmer needs to posses two or three draft animals.
With the price of two buffaloes and a little added capital, the
same farmer can purchase a hand tiller complete with farming
attachments. Modernized farming methods are not as expensive as
once thought. Farmers, however, say the productivity of machine-
worked fields is a bit lower than fields worked with draft
animals, although this has not been confirmed scientifically. Any
production loss is more than offset by the financial savings the
farm machinery provide, as indicated by a study done during
1993/1994 by two researchers from the University of Sebelas
Maret. The researches found that in Pekalongan, Central Java the
production cost of each planting by tiller-assisted farming is Rp
730,354 per ha, while for animal-assisted farming it is Rp
793,184 per ha. This savings comes from the fact that tillers are
faster and less labor intensive.

Keeping farm animals is expensive and troublesome. The animals
need constant care and are susceptible to diseases. Providing
cattle fodder is a demanding task for the average farmer. With
the loss of village commons (converted to rice fields or housing
projects), villagers have to look farther afield to find fodder
for their cattle. Sometimes the grass, hay or sugar-cane leaves
must be transported across rivers on rafts. More farmers now sell
their draft animals, keeping only two or three cows for their
milk and for transportation. Their main work animals, buffalo,
cannot be used for anything other than plowing. These animals are
not fit for driving carts. Their meat is not particularly tasty
either. So more farmers have concluded that keeping buffalo is
expensive, and that tillers are affordable.

Hand tiller owners rent their machines to farmers who have
neither draft animals nor tillers. In Yogyakarta, the rent is Rp
100 a lobang. A hectare is approximately 1,000 lobang. It
therefore costs Rp 100,000 (US$44) a hectare. At Rp 80,000 a
hectare, the rent for oxen is cheaper, but because the animal's
work capacity is lower, the end cost for plowing one hectare adds
up to more than working with a hand tiller. Javanese farmers'
holdings are usually small, most are less than one hectare. For
farmers who can afford to buy farm machinery, the equipment not
only brings efficiency and economy but also constitutes a sound
business investment. By renting out his machine, a farmer could
recover his initial capital outlay in two years.

Many people are sorry to see traditional village life
disappear. After the introduction of modern footwear, Japanese
motorcycles, and then electricity, piped water and public
telephones, came the modernization of villager's work method. The
rice millers were followed by the hand tillers, then came the
automatic threshers, and here and there planting machines are
being introduced.

Many farmers do not lovingly cut the mature rice stalks with
an ani-ani anymore. They now roughly grab the rice stalks by the
handfuls and slash them with a scythe -- the modern way.