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.