Colleague takes over Justika's unfinished business

Colleague takes over Justika's unfinished business

By Sylvia Gratia M. Nirang

Analysts have said that rebuilding the economy should include
much more attention to agriculture. Newly appointed Minister of
Agriculture Soleh Solahuddin is now faced with this challenge.
The woman appointed for the job in the seventh development
cabinet, Justika Sjarifudin Baharsjah, now the Minister of Social
Affairs, earlier set the priorities which she considered crucial.
One of them was to bring self-sufficiency to the now costly
source of nutrition we took for granted -- soybeans.

JAKARTA (JP): Justika Sjarifudin Baharsjah's inclusion in the
previous cabinet lineup heralded two new phenomena. First, she
was the first woman to fill a ministerial post by replacing her
own husband. Second, she was the first woman appointed as a
portfolio minister.

She was assigned to revitalize the agriculture sector, which
carries the burden of lifting the country out of its current
economic crisis.

The plunging value of the rupiah's value has forced the
government to rethink its agricultural strategy of relying on
imports to meet the country's ever-growing consumption of rice,
soybeans, corn and other commodities.

The task was entrusted to Justika, an agriculture professor
from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture. She has been replaced by
Soleh Solahuddin, the institute's rector.

Born in Cianjur, West Java, on May 7, 1937, she graduated from
the University of Indonesia's School of Agriculture (which has
been the Bogor Institute of Agriculture since 1963) in 1962. She
married Sjarifudin Baharsjah, her senior at the university, the
following year. They have two daughters.

She received a master's degree from the University of Kentucky
in 1964 and later returned to earn her doctorate at the Bogor
Institute of Agriculture.

A grandmother of two, Justika still teaches at several
universities and is also chairwoman of Indonesian Agronomists
Association (PERAGI).

The day she was appointed to the cabinet, she vowed to boost
the country's production of several important commodities
including rice, corn and soybeans to cut back on imports.

Indonesia, known for its rich natural resources, ironically
has to import at least 1.2 million tons of sugar, 1.3 million
tons of corn and 700,000 tons of soybeans annually.

Critics

Last year's drought also forced the country to import around
one million tons of rice.

Besides those commodities, Indonesia also imports meat, milk
and milk products, fruit and other produce to meet local demand.

For soybeans alone, local production reached 1.49 million
metric tons last year, but consumption is now a staggering 2.3
million tons.

The economic crisis led to the disappearance of once popular
food items which use soybeans -- particularly tempeh and tofu --
from dinner tables.

The government set aside a huge subsidy to import food.

It was heartening when Justika indicated that making Indonesia
self-sufficient in soybeans by the year 2000 was one of the
ministry's top priorities.

She said the target could be achieved by using about 500,000
hectares of idle land across the country to plant good-quality
soybeans.

Her optimism invited criticism from agriculture analysts who
said it would be very difficult to meet the target, considering
unfavorable weather and climate and a decline in the amount of
productive land.

A noted analyst said he considered a 12-month to 24-month
turnaround too ambitious and probably too costly as farmers had
inadequate knowledge of how to increase their yields.

"It is more reasonable to aim for soybean self-sufficiency in
four to five years with intensive efforts, or eight years if we
take it slowly," another analyst said.

But Justika seemed quite optimistic.

"Self-sufficiency in soybeans will be possible after 2000. We
will continue trying to boost our production," she insisted.

The new minister was one who was not as optimistic -- Soleh
had said that such ambitions needed to be supported by progress
in the necessary technology to improve yield.

Many of Justika's aides said she was overshadowed by her
husband all this time before her own ministerial appointment. She
was the real minister of agriculture behind Sjarifudin, they
said.

One official said most of Sjarifudin's moves during his five-
years tenure stemmed from Justika's ideas.

"She is more clever, more intelligent, more ambitious and more
courageous than her husband," one of her aides said.

But Justika denied the claims, saying modestly that she just
accompanied her husband as his wife and also as an agriculture
expert.

"Bapak (Sjarifudin) knows all about agricultural problems. I
just helped him by sharing my ideas. Besides, he is an
agriculture socioeconomist and I am an agronomist. He knows about
economics more than I do, and maybe I know a little bit more than
him about agriculture and farming techniques," she told The
Jakarta Post.

When asked what hints he had given his wife for taking over
the ministry, Sjarifudin had said, "Ibu (Justika) is not a
follower. She is a leader. She will do whatever she wants to do.
She doesn't need anybody to tell her what she has to do."

Five days after her installation, she began her job by
cooperating with the country's Armed Forces in the deployment of
military personnel for various agricultural activities.

Under the program, military personnel, equipped with tractors
and other modern equipment, help farmers grow crops. Idle land
outside of Java is being targeted during the routine Armed Forces
civic mission in rural areas across the country.

Justika also urged the central bank to lower lending rates
charged on farming activities to encourage businesspeople to
invest in the agribusiness sector.

"Lending rates for agribusiness should be lower than those for
other sectors because it is a resource-based business and people
cannot make a profit in a short-period."

She said the high-lending rates had encouraged farmers to
cease farming, given that around 30,000 hectares of agricultural
land was converted for nonfarming purposes every year.

For many, the relocation of the Directorate General of
Plantations from the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture to
the forestry ministry had made the ministry far less
"attractive". The plantation sector was considered the ministry's
"cash cow" all these years.

But Justika welcomed the switch, saying that it would make it
easier for the ministry to focus on its efforts to revitalize the
agriculture sector.

Although many people had applauded her appointment and said
that she was the best person for the position, she insisted there
were many agriculture experts who were more suitable for the job.

"It never crossed my mind that I would replace Bapak in that
position," she said. "But I'm glad that I was given something
I've been involved in for over 35 years."

Now, she has to learn the ropes of being minister of social
services. Soleh, who takes over her position, was one of
Justika's colleagues at IPB with whom she had several
consultations during her barely two months in office.

He now assumes the responsibility of continuing what Justika
started in doing the utmost to prevent another food supply
crisis.