Give farmers the attention they deserve

Give farmers the attention they deserve

Benget Simbolon Tnb., Jakarta

Imagine what would happen to the country if all of the farmers
went on strike.

Given that farmers make up about 70 percent of the population
and that the country is extremely dependent on agriculture, a
strike would certainly cause a very serious disturbance to our
everyday lives. Even worse, it would be disastrous for our
economy and political system.

Fortunately for us, such a strike is a near impossibility. Our
farmers do not have the capacity for such an action because most
of them live hand-to-mouth.

Tracing their history, one can only conclude that farmers are
generally obedient citizens. There are few cases of farmers
becoming radicalized, when they apparently could no longer bear
the burden of so many injustices. Then, with a push from a third
party, they revolted, as we suspect recently occurred in central
Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.

Farmers seem to have become accustomed to not having any
power, the result of their structurally rather than the
functionally designed relations with those institutions they deal
with. In such structural relations, within a corrupt society, the
strong party tends to act like a predator when given the chance.

Although these institutions are meant to help the farmers,
most farmers view them as extensions of the government's role as
ruler. And for most of them, the nature of the ruler is like the
wind and the nature of the ruled is like the grass; whenever the
wind blows, the grass must bow down.

Given their lack of power, farmers have become an easy target
for predatory institutions and unscrupulous officials. The media
frequently reports on some village cooperatives unit diverting
cheap loans provided by the government for farmers to other
parties at higher rates.

Influential lobbyists, who are rent-seekers by nature,
have persuaded the government to form institutions to manage
certain commodities, supposedly to "assist" farmers and improve
the country's agriculture system.

The Clove Marketing and Buffer Stock Agency, for example, was
given the authority to manage cloves under former president
Soeharto. But far from helping farmers, all the agency did was
harm the agricultural sector.

Some importers have managed to lobby the government to import
certain agricultural products, such as rice, sugar, onions and
soybeans, with the ostensible aim of stabilizing the prices of
these products in the domestic market or to tackle "shortages".

Imports of rice in the past, for example, which were also
meant to supply inexpensive rice for the poor, harmed farmers.
They drove down rice prices to below the cost of production.

The government decided to stop such imports last year. But
Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu announced recently that the
government would allow the imports again, even though the local
rice market has been doing fine without them.

Even when the rice market works normally, farmers generally
make just enough to survive, with most of the profits from rice
crops going to other parties, such as rice mill owners and rice
distributors. And with rice imports pushing down prices, farmers
will find it that much more difficult just to go on surviving.

Farmers are also dealing with decreasing land for agriculture
and decreasing land ownership as the largest players in the field
amass more and more land.

They certainly envy the good fortunes of their counterparts in
other countries. In Taiwan and South Korea, for example, farmers
have benefited from land reform and from the full integration
with the industrial sector.

In some developed countries, such as Japan, farmers receive
strong protection from their governments, although in truth such
a policy goes against the spirit of the World Trade Organization.

But in Indonesia the agricultural sector and the industrial
sector work as two separate systems. This is evident in the fact
that growth in the manufacturing sector does not automatically
translate into growth for the agricultural sector.

Under Soeharto, the manufacturing sector averaged 12 percent
annual growth, while the agricultural sector, which includes
fisheries and animal husbandry, averaged just over 3 percent.

Considering their large numbers, their role in the country's
economy, particularly in guaranteeing food security and
maintaining stability, farmers are too important to be neglected.

Unfortunately, farmers are powerless to protect themselves
from predatory institutions and unscrupulous officials.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.