East Java coffee farmers prosper amid crisis

East Java coffee farmers prosper amid crisis

By Lewa Pardomuan

SIDOMULYO, East Java (Reuters): Not all Indonesians have suffered so badly in their country's economic collapse. In fact, coffee growers are doing rather nicely.

At the start of 1980, farmers living in this hilly and quiet Indonesian village were too poor to buy the staple rice. Instead, they ate dried cassava, which they cultivated on their farms. Then coffee started to change their lives.

"We used to live in a hut with a thatched roof. But now, even during the economic crisis, we are surviving," said Masduki, a coffee farmer in Sidomulyo, about 230 km (140 miles) east of Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java.

Thanks to the massive fall in Indonesia's currency over the past two years, coffee growers are now paid many more rupiah for their product, which is priced internationally in U.S. dollars.

"We feel blessed during the crisis. When we have guests we can easily boil water for them because we have a gas stove. We can afford to buy a television too," Masduki, wearing a light purple sarong and a black songkok, a traditional hat, told Reuters inside his brick house near his coffee plantation.

Thatched-roof huts have become a thing of the past in Sidomulyo.

"In the past, no one from this village could afford to go on the haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Now, there are plenty. I plan to do it when God wants me to," said the 59-year-old father of two as he puffed a clove cigarette.

There are about 5,000 families in Sidomulyo, a village in Jember regency -- the key coffee growing area in East Java -- and most of them grow coffee. Masduki owns 3,200 robusta coffee trees in a two-hectare plot and currently leads a communal workshop.

"One day, I want to become an exporter," he said.

Farmers are producing more coffee, too. The crop for the 1998/99 coffee season (October-September) is expected to exceed 400,000 tones, compared with 360,000 tones estimated for the previous year.

Coffee is also grown in Sumatra, Indonesia's top growing area.

When Masduki started planting robusta coffee in his village in 1981, farmers received as little as Rp 1,500/kg.

At the start of the economic crisis in 1997, the rupiah traded at Rp 2,400 per dollar and a kilogram of coffee was priced at between Rp 4,000 and Rp 5,000.

Coffee prices continued to rise as the economy deteriorated. Current prices are Rp 15,000/kg with the rupiah hovering at Rp 8,800 against the dollar.

"The crisis has become the best momentum to promote agribusiness... It is expected to change all the negative perception about agriculture," said Handri Suwasono, chairman of the plantation bureau of the Jember administration.

"In the past, people only wanted to deal with such businesses as property. But agribusiness survives during the crisis," he said.

Plantations in Jember cover an area of 15,675 hectares (38,730 acres). Its 20,000 farmers own around 4,200 hectares (10,400 acres) while the rest belongs to state-run and private plantation companies.

Indonesia is one of the world's top producers of coffee, cocoa, rubber, pepper and palm oil, but it is only during the crisis -- which has ravaged secondary and tertiary sectors -- that people started to realize the importance of agribusiness.

During the rule of former president Soeharto, Indonesia strove hard to become an industrialized country and neglected agriculture. Soeharto was forced to step down last May amid bloody riots in Jakarta that killed 1,200 people.

Indonesia never entirely overlooked agricultural production, however, and the recent revival has also benefited the officials responsible for spreading expertise among the farmers.

"Farmers will come to us and complain if we are not so active in teaching them how to take care of their coffee," said Husni Thamrin, one of the officials employed by the local government to educate coffee farmers in Jember.

"Actually, our additional income comes from working together with the farmers. They will give us a tip, say, if we give them information about prices and other stuff," he said.

Being civil servants, the educators' income is as little as Rp 200,000 a month while a coffee farmer may earn as much as one million rupiah a month.