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.