Farmers weep at harvest time due to low rice price

JAKARTA (JP): Everything comes to those who wait.

The old proverb sounds irrelevant to farmers who are lamenting the rice harvest. The harvest comes but they weep as the price of rice has dropped drastically.

Some say that the drop in rice is normal as the harvest comes at almost the same time in throughout the country.

Some farmers blame the government which does nothing to help, instead, they allow imported rice to be marketed here.

"Why should we import rice while we have abundant stocks at home. This must be the game of those in the government. The victims are us farmers," said Suwarno, a farmer in the village of Dukuh Waluh, Banyumas, Central Java.

He said that the price of unhusked rice had dropped by 40 percent to between Rp 700 and Rp 750 per kilogram.

"Sometimes I think to stop tilling the land and quit the rice field," Suwarno, 45, a farmer in the village of Dukuh Waluh, Banyumas, said.

The unhusked rice formerly sold for Rp 1,100 and Rp 1,200. "But now one kilogram of unhusked rice costs Rp 750. This must be because of the government policy on rice imports," Suwarno said.

Soekrisno, a 46-year-old farmer in Kembang village, Nanggulan sub-district, Kulonprogo regency, Yogyakarta, said the government should have protected its own farmers by launching a market intervention and stopping the influx of imported rice.

He said he had delayed harvesting his rice for four days. "Who knows if the price will get higher soon?"

Soekrisno said that if the price was flat until next week, he had no choice but to harvest the rice.

Importation of rice has made farmers in Makassar, South Sulawesi, angry also. The province is one of the national rice barns.

"The quality of imported rice is much better than local rice, while the price is competitive," Dalle, a farmer in the village of Maros, 15 kilometers north of Makassar, said.

"Harvest time this year means catastrophe," Dalle said.

The unhusked rice slides from Rp 1,410 to between Rp 700 and Rp 800, while the stock is abundant. This has discouraged almost four million farmers in South Sulawesi, who want to celebrate a grand harvest from April to May.

In some areas, harvest time has come.

The government, through the logistic agency (Dolog), has failed to raise the price of rice.

The regency of Sidrap, for example, produces some 35,000 tons of rice in one harvest time, unfortunately, the logistic agency could afford to buy only 10 tons of rice from the whole province.

The head of the provincial logistic agency, Denny MP acknowledged that the agency had very limited amounts of money to subsidize the farmers.

"We are facing a surplus of 1.5 million tons of rice annually. The imported rice deteriorates the market," said Denny.

In Yogyakarta, the village cooperative assigned by the logistic agency to help the farmers, has refused to buy the farmers' rice from three months ago for unclear reasons, Soekrisno said.

Farmers are more frustrated because the money they get from selling the rice does not cover the production costs.

"I can buy only 60 kilograms of fertilizer from the money I got from selling 100 kilograms of rice," Soekrisno said, adding that he had bought the rice seeds at Rp 3,000 per kilogram.

The Makassar farmer, Dalle, said he and many other farmers had lost around Rp 200,000 during this year's harvest.

"For one planting season we have to spend a total of Rp 1 million per hectare of rice," he said, explaining expenses of Rp 300,000 for tractor rental, Rp 350,000 for seeds, fertilizer and insecticides, Rp 250,000 for labor and Rp 200,000 for renting a huller.

"If the price of unhusked rice is only Rp 800 per kilogram, we will collect only Rp 800,000, with the assumption that one hectare of field produces one ton rice," he said.

Central Java Governor Mardiyanto shared his opinion that imported rice had affected local farmers. "Central Java alone has surplus rice. There is no need to import rice," he said, adding that the regencies of Purwodadi, Sragen, Grobogan and Demak are the province rice barns.

"We will allocate Rp 85 billion to buy more rice from the farmers in a bid to deal with the price drop in Central Java," he said. (27/44/45/sur)