Government blamed for low urea tablet use by farmers

Government blamed for low urea tablet use by farmers

JAKARTA (JP): An economic consultancy group blames the reluctance of farmers to use the newly-introduced urea fertilizer tablets on the government, for its failure to adopt friendly and persuasive means to introduce the fertilizers.

Rizal Ramly, the director of the Econit Advisory Group, said last week that instead of using farmer-friendly techniques, the government has compelled farmers to replace prilled, or granular, urea fertilizer -- with which they have been familiar for the last two decades -- with tablet urea.

So far, he said, this approach has only caused farmers to reject the new product since they were unwilling accept drastic changes to their traditional ways of farming.

Rizal compared the government's present means of effecting change unfavourably with those used in the 1970s, when urea fertilizer was first introduced to farmers.

That time, he said, prices of urea on the domestic market were slashed down to 40 percent or 50 percent of those on the international market. Intensive guidance and training as well as subsidized loans were also provided to farmers.

As a result, rice production increased from 20 million tons in 1970 to 40 million tons in 1989.

Now, Rizal said, the government tends to use coercive techniques towards farmers, with an approach similar to those used during the colonial times.

At the same time, farmers are suffering a shortage of granular urea, which is strange because Indonesia has become a net exporter of the product.

For the first time in the past two decades, there were problems of distribution. In fact, urea fertilizer started disappearing from the market, Rizal was quoted by the Kompas daily as saying.

Tablets

According to Econit, the government's efforts to popularize the use of urea tablets started in 1992. At that time, 15 regencies were chosen for the government's pilot project.

The government said that urea tablets, although about 13 percent costlier than prilled urea, can be used more efficiently because they need to be "planted" only once before the rice is harvested.

The tablets can save up to 36 percent of the urea needed for one hectare of rice field. Thus, only 199 kg of tablet urea is needed per hectare, compared to 310 kg of the granular urea.

Urea tablets are also said to help increase rice production by 13 percent or 0.7 tons per hectare and farmers' income by Rp 280,357 (US$122).

In the 1995/1996 planting season, 53 regencies covering 2.1 million hectares of rice fields -- which had the most fertile soil in Indonesia -- were included in the project.

The project proved successful, Rizal said, but could not be used as an indicator of the government's achievement in popularizing the new fertilizer.

But Rizal considered the government's calculations too optimistic. He said they failed to add a new cost factor, which was the labor cost needed to "plant" the fertilizer tablets.

Urea tablets, Rizal said, are produced by PT Ariyo Seto Wijoyo, together with the state-owned fertilizer manufacturing plant, PT Pusri.

Ariyo Seto, he said, has a 75 percent stake in the urea tablet processing units, of which it is also the manager. The remaining 25 percent is owned by village cooperatives (KUD).

Ariyo Seto currently has 122 tablet processing machines located in 53 regencies. It imposes a processing fee of Rp 35 per kg of tablets and receives Rp 25 in profit for each kilogram produced.

Rizal estimated that Ariyo Seto's annual profits from the production of 82,550 tons of urea tablets amount to Rp 22.95 billion, of which Rp 13.39 billion is derived from production fees and made up to Rp 22.95 billion by the marketing margin.

The current shortage of granular fertilizer, Rizal said, is a result of the government's orders to the 53 regencies to use urea tablets.

He considered the shortage a "phantom shortage", not a real one, since Indonesia's fertilizer production exceeds domestic demand.

He said the phantom shortage occurred, firstly, because the conversion of granular urea into tablets was not followed by an addition to the supply of granular urea. Secondly, it was caused by an increase in the number of "delivery orders", involving traders who bought fertilizer at village cooperatives and sold to farmers at higher prices.

Thirdly, the fertilizer provided in the 53 regencies were only od the tablet-type, which were unfamiliar to farmers, while the granular type "disappeared".

And lastly, because Pusri recently changed its extra stock requirement from a month's worth of fertilizer supplies to only two weeks.

Rizal pointed out that using urea tablets would have a positive impact on agriculture, but he suggested the government take more persuasive, farmer-friendly means of propagating the technique. (pwn)