Farmers' buying power down over the last two years

Farmers' buying power down over the last two years

JAKARTA (JP): Amidst the success of Indonesia self-sufficiency
in rice, the buying power of its farmers have weakened in the
last two years, forcing them to work harder to obtain their day-
to-day necessities.

Vice chief of the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) Sugito
M.A. said on Monday that such a condition in 12 rice-producing
provinces will drive farmers to leave their jobs and look for
other opportunities in other sectors.

"They work as laborers, craftsmen, street vendors or other
professions as long as the work gives them better earnings,"
Sugito said, adding that the farmers have no choice but to quit
their former occupations.

Indonesia, a former huge rice importer, has been successful in
making itself self-sufficient in rice production since 1984.

Citing an example, Sugito was quoted by Kompas daily as saying
that the index of farmer buying power in West Java had decreased
by five percent from 106.20 in 1991 to 95.09 in 1993.

The standard index of buying power is 100.

In other provinces, including Central Java, East Java and
Yogyakarta, the index had declined respectively from 104.60 to
94.96, 105,00 to 94.25 and 103.60 to 96.72.

The other rice-producing provinces are Aceh, North Sumatra,
West Sumatra, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, South Kalimantan, North
Sulawesi and South Sulawesi.

Sugito said that the buying power of farmers in all of those
non-Java provinces had decreased by between one and sixteen
percent from their respective indexes in 1988 and 1994 (between
January and March).

Weakening

In a related development, a noted South Sulawesi-based
businessman, Jusuf Kalla, repeatedly aired his concern over the
weakening buying power of Indonesian villagers.

Kalla once noted that in 1974 the price of a tractor was
approximately Rp 1,750,000 while the fare of a ton of rice had
reached over a hundred of thousands rupiah.

"A tractor was then equaled to more or less 17 tons of rice,"
Kompas reported, adding that in 1993 the comparison had changed
dramatically into one tractor for five tons of rice.

It is estimated that Indonesia, the forth most populated
country in the world, has some 60 percent of its people working
on farms.

Touching the issue of Javanese farmers, Sugito revealed that
most of their fertile rice fields had been transformed into golf
courses, real estates, factories and dams.

He said that the number of petani gurem (a Javanese-derived
term for poor peasants who have no fields but labor for other
farmers) had increased lately due to the fast changing of land
ownership.

The statistician added that a way out of this troublesome
condition is rising the floor price of paddy and making it a
little bit higher than the common necessities of farming such as
fertilizer.

"The other way is improving the efficiency of our farming
activities to reduce production costs," he said, adding that
Indonesian farmers are well prepared to do so as long as they
have enough information.

According to BPS, the 1988's buying power of farmers in Aceh,
North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, South
Kalimantan, North Sulawesi and South Sulawesi are respectively
101.56, 105.31, 112.07, 104.27, 102.11, 103.26, 100.34 and
106.88.

The curve of buying power indexes increased from 1988 to 1991
but has decreased since then. (09)