Celebrated peat farm project comes to nothing

A group of journalists and environmentalists visited the canceled "one million hectare peat land project" in Central Kalimantan at the invitation of Care International Indonesia last week. The Jakarta Post' Pandaya has this report.

KUALA KAPUAS, Central Kalimantan (JP): After a rollercoaster ride down the tumultuous Kapuas River, we entered the canal bisecting the "million-hectare peat farmland" project.

The canal, 25 meters wide, showed clear signs of deterioration. In some places the banks had eroded and men were doing repair work on them.

The canal is part of the 4,500 kilometer irrigation canal system encompassing 12 subdistricts, mostly in Kapuas regency. The Soeharto government built them to make his wet rice-farming dream come true.

Soeharto initiated the project when he saw Indonesia's autonomy in rice production -- the pride of the regime -- come to an abrupt end, due mainly to the dwindling availability of agricultural land in fertile Java along with rapid population growth.

"Be careful, very slippery," shouted the bare-chested, dark- skinned skipper of a passing motorboat -- locally called klotok -- as we disembarked and proceeded to climb up a wooden ladder onto the bank of the canal.

Boats are the main mode of transportation and, for the people living there, their lifeline to the outside world.

The first impression one immediately got from looking around was that the landscape was barren -- this being the very same land the government called at one time Indonesia's "future rice barn." A dozen small wood-frame houses lined the canal's banks, but there was clearly no farming activity going on in the area.

Welcome to Sumber Alaska transmigration village. No, we're not in another country. The village was named after the company that built it in 1996, and was then abandoned by it.

Having gotten caught in a downpour, we scrambled for shelter, dashing into a collection of small shops offering everything from toiletries, cosmetics and kerosene, to coffee and instant noodles.

"Are you coming to see the rats?" the shopkeeper, a man in his 30s, asked us bitterly.

Rats? We burst into laughter, thinking the shopkeeper was joking. But as we toured the area everyone blamed rats for their misery. Not only the farmers, but even environmentalists and government bureaucrats talked about the problem of rats in the area -- albeit from different angles.

For instance the government (of the New Order regime), blamed the rat endemic for the failure of the agriculture project because they were devouring the crops being grown. In a show of concern it allocated Rp 52 billion to buy 309 tons of poison and 770 chainsaws to remove buried wood where the vermin lived.

But the move met with strong objection from environmentalists, who argued that the poison would kill not only the rats but would also pollute the environment as well as endanger humans that ate the crops. Areas downstream would also be affected.

The critics managed to force the government to back down and the rats were spared. Last week, the local state TV station TVRI showed footage of farmers being mobilized to catch the rats. The government plans to kill 100,000 rodents.

Misery

The ambitious Rp 5 billion project has been terminated after a re-evaluation team found that the peat land was not suitable for rice cultivation. The fate of over 63,000 farmers who migrated to the area from other provinces, mainly Java, remains uncertain.

Resettlers, who have primarily come from Java, painted a bleak picture of what lies ahead for them if they stay. They said paddy could not grow except in certain plots, and to survive they have had to rely on jadup, the basic commodities the government provides them with until they are able to support themselves as farmers.

Corn, cassava and ground nut grow well in the soil but the rats devour these delicacies before they become ripe enough to harvest. The soil is good for banana too, but the price is intolerably low.

"I wonder what may happen when the ransom is stopped in a few months to come," says Saptono, a Javanese who moved to the peat land project in 1998 but has abandoned it and become a civil servant in Palangkaraya. Saptono first lived as a transmigrant in the fertile land of Manufahi, East Timor, which he had to abandon together with 42 fellow Javanese after being terrorized by pro- independence gangs.

He says he quit the peat farm project because he did not see any real prospects there.

Dilemma

The dilemma facing the resettlers is that they sold everything they had in their native villages before moving to Kalimantan. Many long for their old homes in Java but they are too impoverished to go back.

"I will try for another two years and if nothing improves I will go back and start all over again," says Saroji, 50, who came from Palingkau, another regency in Central Kalimantan.

The residents of Sumber Alaska say they are lucky to have an elementary school in their neighborhood. However, health services are very poor. The health post has been left unmanned and they have to travel by boat to the nearest Dadahup town whenever they get ill.

Groundwater is undrinkable because it is highly acidic. In the rainy season they rely on rainwater for drinking. In the dry season they have to collect water from the irrigation canal and make it potable.

"Government officials promised us an easy life, fertile land... but none of this is true," says Sunardi, a resettler from Boyolali, Central Java.

Also sharing in the misery is the indigenous Dayak tribe who handed over their ancestral lands for the government project. They have lost their source of livelihood -- hunting grounds, rattan, jelutong latex and other forest products.

Many of them have been accommodated by being included in the project, but most have abandoned their houses to look for jobs elsewhere.

Compensation

After Soeharto fell from grace, thousands of indigenous people demanded compensation for land they were forced to give up -- and on which they used to cultivate rattan, rubber and other cash crops.

According to Yan Hendri Ale, a senior official at the Kuala Kapuas regency's Development Planning Board, 27,000 indigenous people have submitted petitions for such compensation.

"Because the project was handled by the central government, we referred the petitions to Jakarta. The project lacked proper research and we sensed trouble from the outset," he says.

The compensation problem arose over the fact that the New Order government assumed the forest belonged to the state and therefore the natives were not entitled to any compensation. Strangely, indigenous people in several villages were offered compensation and this sparked the demand from people in other areas.

The Central Kalimantan provincial government has set up a team of 20 people to help locals obtain their rightful compensation.

Scapegoat

Suwido H. Limin of the Center for International Cooperation in Management of Tropical Peatland (CIMTROP), has stated that a lack of adequate research -- which should have been implemented prior to the project -- was also partly responsible for its not being a success.

The rat endemic, he argues, is not the ultimate cause of the failure. The combination of poor soil, an unbalanced ecosystem and lack of skilled farmers are also to blame.

"The failure of the peat land project has ruined the local community's source of livelihood. Rubber plantation, rattan, traditional fisheries and traditional wet rice farming have been totally destroyed," he said.

The multimillion dollar project has come to a halt. It is unlikely that the money poured into corrupt pockets could be recouped, although some officials in charge of the project have gone on trial for alleged corruption.

Say Sunardi: "The (Gus Dur) government has promised improvement. If the commitment is honored, we will stay, if not we will leave this place for good."