Donggala cacao farmers savor robust business amid crisis

Donggala cacao farmers savor robust business amid crisis

By Iriandi Ibrahim

DONGGALA, Palu (JP): The economic crisis has gripped the
country for more than a year and a half. People are crying and
praying, hoping that it will end soon. But things are different
in the Donggala regency of Central Sulawesi, the main cacao bean
exporting area of Indonesia.

Cacao farmers are harvesting a bundle of money during the
current crisis. The further the rupiah falls against the dollar,
the bigger the farmers' profits. Before the crisis, a kilogram of
cacao sold for Rp 3,000. When the rupiah was at its lowest level,
cacao was being sold for more than Rp 20,000 per kilo. The
average price of cacao is now between Rp 15,000 and Rp 17,000 per
kilo.

Lured by the soaring prices, many farmers who used to grow
rice, have turned to cacao. For example, 70 percent of the
farmers in Kasimbar, a village of 6,500 residents located in the
district of Ampibabo in the Donggala regency, some 130 kilometers
east of the provincial capital of Palu, have given up growing
rice, converting their fields into cacao plantations.

"Growing cacao is far more simple, faster and more
profitable," said Ariawan, a transmigrant from Bali who now lives
in the village. "Growing rice is more complicated. There are a
lot of problems: mice, harvest failures and now the expensive
fertilizer."

The village head, Andi Lantang, has not discouraged farmers
from turning their rice fields into cacao plantations. He
believes that if the country's economy recovers and the rupiah
strengthens, the cacao price will decline and the farmers will
certainly return to growing rice.

The high price of cacao has also enticed civil servants and
others into trying their hands at growing the commodity. Edy, a
university graduate who is now headmaster of an elementary school
in the village of Kasimbar, said he owned two hectares of land
where he grew 2,000 cacao plants. He harvests half of the plants
every 10 days.

Unlike rice, which can only be harvested three times a year at
the most, cacao farmers can harvest their crops several times a
month. That is why almost every day the farmers are busy in their
cacao fields and are able to sell the beans in the market. This
is also the reason why many cacao farmers can afford TVs,
stereos, parabolas and other items most people would consider
luxuries.

CV Margalewa, a cacao trader in the nearby town of Parigi,
said that when the price of cacao reached its peak of Rp 20,000
per kilogram recently, he was paying between Rp 300 million and
Rp 600 million a day to buy the beans from farmers.

Two motorbike showrooms in Parigi also ran out of stock
several times during this boom time because of the high demand
from the nouveaux riches for the bikes. When the farmers were
told that the motorbikes were out of stock, they did not hesitate
to pay in advance to secure a bike once the stock arrived.

There was a story spread among the villagers about a farming
family who bought three motorbikes at once: one for each of the
parents and one for their teenage daughter. Surprisingly, they
did not know how to ride the bikes, so the vehicles ended up in
the living room as accessories.

Many villagers ride the motorbikes, called motor coklat or
chocolate motorbikes, without the benefit of a driver license.

In the village of Kasimbar, the biggest and most populated in
the regency, not only did the farmers buy motorbikes, electronic
appliances and pay for home renovations, many of them spent the
money for the haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Before the crisis, 10
people from the village had been on the pilgrimage, but last year
that number doubled.

In Salumpaku, a small village in the Banawa district in the
Donggala regency, almost all of the 209 families residing in the
village depend on cacao farming. The 6,000-hectare village has
4,000 hectares of cacao plantations with some 50,000 cacao
plants. The plants are harvested twice monthly, yielding about 50
tons of cacao each month.

The village head, Amrin Lawampa, said that since the price of
cacao began to increase, the villagers have been in constant
party mode, making the circuit of wedding, circumcision and
housewarming parties.

"In 1998, there were 50 new married couples, and every party
always required a cow or a goat," said Amrin.

Between Rp 5 million and Rp 8 million is now spent per party,
compared to between Rp 3 million and Rp 5 million before the
economic crisis.

While many people across the country have been laid off and
are finding it nearly impossible to find work, villagers in
Donggala often turn down job offers from the labor intensive
projects managed by the local public works office.

"Working in the cacao fields, we can earn between Rp 10,000
and Rp 15,000 per day plus a free meal," said a farmer. This is
much more attractive than the daily wage of Rp 6,000 or Rp 7,000
for working on the government's labor intensive projects.

Another effect of the crisis is that the farmers, even those
who have little education and small pieces of land, have become
quite interested in following the daily fluctuations of the
dollar and the rupiah -- something they had never thought of
doing before.