'Farming remains subsistent activity'

'Farming remains subsistent activity'

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Transmigration Siswono Yudohusodo
said Indonesian agriculture development has yet to improve
farmers' welfare because farming is still a subsistence activity
rather than a profit-generating economic enterprise.

The Antara news agency quoted Siswono as saying in Pontianak,
West Kalimantan, on Thursday that despite overall progress in
agriculture and increases in income per capita, the number of
poor, landless farmers is still high.

Indonesia now produces over 50 million of tons of rice per
year and reached self-sufficiency in rice in 1984. It went back
to importing in 1991.

"Our farmers have neither worked efficiently nor prospered
from farming," Siswono said at the Panca Bhakti University. He
was speaking about the importance of opening new farming areas,
outside densely populated Java, as an "urgent strategic move"
needed to deal with the problem of poor farmers.

"Our agriculture development has yet to motivate farmers to
strive for prosperity," he said. He blamed the situation on,
among other things, limited access to land ownership.

He said a great number of Indonesian farmers did not own land,
let alone advanced farming technology.

A 1983 census on farming found there were 9,532,000 farmers
that did not own land. Ten years later, the number of tenant
farmers increased to 10,937,000.

In general, farmers are more prosperous than they were years
ago, but workers in other sectors have fared even better, he
said.

The average farmer has 0.2 hectares of land, but the amount of
farming land converted into non-farming plots such as real and
industrial estates, roads and dams, has been increasing over the
years.

"With such a small piece of land, it's difficult for farmers
to prosper and to work efficiently and productively," he said.

"Every year, 40,000 hectares of farm land is converted to
other uses," he said. He estimated that by 2005, when Indonesia
embarks on its eighth five-year development plan, the absolute
number of farmers will have declined significantly.

He said the quality of farming can only be improved if
subsistence farming is replaced with farming practices aimed
toward economic development.

To correct the situation, agricultural development needs to be
re-oriented from targeting production increases to increasing
farmers' income.

"But what's more important is giving farmers more land," he
said. "This policy has been implemented by almost all countries
with successful agriculture development such as Netherlands,
Australia, Argentine and Japan," he said. (swe)