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.