Fertilizer crisis heaps on the social tension

SEMARANG (JP): Mulyadi, his hands and feet drenched with mud, sat daydreaming on a dike of his farm. Puffing his cigarette once in a while, the 50-year-old farmer in Wonogiri set his eyes on the paddy crop he planted a week before.

He was disappointed because his crop had not grown properly as expected. It has turned yellowish because it lacked fertilizer. Mulyadi can no longer afford to buy fertilizer after the price doubled and even tripled.

Farmers Supardi, 47, and Mulyono, 56, whose fields are located near Mulyadi's, are in the same boat. They, too, can do nothing to save their crops.

"See the crop in that plot? Hopeless," said Mulyono. "Fertilizer is not only unbelievably expensive but also difficult to find on the market nowadays."

The farmers' complaint is typical. Farmers have been desperate since the government scrapped the subsidy for fertilizer in December -- a highly unpopular policy which sent the price sky high. And, like Mulyono said, fertilizer has become a scarce commodity.

Mulyono has often gone to the Village Cooperative (KUD) office, the official fertilizer distributor, only to find the same answer again and again: Fertilizer is available but officials cannot set the price yet.

The cooperative will sell fertilizer only at "unreasonably" high prices. For example the cost of a quintal of Urea has soared to Rp 125,000 from Rp 50,000.

"To make things worse, no farmer is allowed to buy more than one quintal," Mulyono said.

Many farmers have tried a trick to overcome the problem by mixing Urea with DAP, a lower-grade fertilizer which costs Rp 52,000 per quintal. But it has been ineffective because although the crop is fertile, the yield is low.

Marwanto, a KUD manager of Selogiri in Wonogiri, said that the sharp increase in fertilizer price was inevitable since the government scrapped the subsidy.

He said that even the KUD often found it difficult to obtain fertilizer supplies for reasons he did not comprehend.

The fertilizer crisis triggered a riot in the Central Java town of Blora a few days after the government scrapped the subsidy in December. Hundreds of angry farmers looted fertilizer from shops.

Dozens of shops and houses were wrecked in the riot.

The provincial Legislative Council has warned that the fertilizer crisis can trigger widespread rioting in the province where farmers constitute the majority of the 30 million population.

"The provincial government should do everything possible to ensure an adequate supply of fertilizer at affordable prices," said councilor Moh. Endro Suyitno, who chairs a council commission in charge of economic affairs.

The council has identified regencies prone to rioting due to the lack of fertilizer, such as Grobogan, Karanganyar, Klaten, Rembang, Sukoharjo, Sragen, Pati, Brebes and Blora.

Fear of rioting due to the fertilizer crisis has also been voiced by Umar Ghani, chief of the Central Java provincial Cooperative Office.

"The scarcity of fertilizer is a serious problem," he said, noting that hot spots include Blora, Brebes, Grobogan, Pati, Karanganyar and Sragen, where demand for fertilizer increases from January through February.

Officials statistics shows that the six regencies, Central Java's main rice producers, consume 38 percent of the 1.2 million tons of fertilizer the province needs for each planting season.

The fertilizer crisis in Central Java and another 160 regencies throughout the country came to the attention of Minister of Cooperatives Adi Sasono when he visited Boyolali, Central Java, recently.

PT Pusri, Indonesia's major fertilizer factory, has prioritized areas along Java's north coast for supply because most paddy fields are in those regions.

Adi alleged that the crisis was partly caused by the excessive use of fertilizer for non-food crops which have lower priority. Besides, he said, fertilizer factories have reduced their production while demand was on the rise.

To overcome the crisis, the government has planned to improve the distribution system and encourage the use of organic fertilizers.

"Production of organic fertilizer with modern technology will get priority," he said.

He reckoned that although fertilizer prices have risen, farmers could still make a profit because the government had raised the floor price of unhusked rice from Rp 700 to 1,500 per kilogram.

In irrigated areas where there are three harvests a year, farmers can earn between 10 million and Rp 12 million per hectare of farm annually, he said.

Suhardi, an agricultural expert from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said that the public should not have responded emotionally to the government's policy of scrapping the subsidy.

"Extensive use of chemical fertilizer harms the environment. Therefore the policy will encourage the use of cheaper, environmentally friendly organic fertilizer," he said.