How Kalimantan farmers are surviving the monatary crisis

By Amon Stefanus

KETAPANG, West Kalimantan (JP): While most Indonesians are living in apprehension as a result of the ongoing monetary crisis, farmers in rural areas of this province have a different story to tell.

Although they are often made the scapegoats for forest destruction, forest fires and the haze, farmers are proving their resilience during the nine-month monetary crisis.

According to Yohanes Suna, 35, an elementary school principal in the rural Ketapang district, farmers in his locality are not feeling the pinch of the monetary crisis because they are currently in their harvest season and have sufficient supplies of rice. The yield from each family's unirrigated rice fields is expected to be enough to last them a whole year.

Their fields also supply them with various kinds of vegetables, such as cassava leaves, cucumbers, wax gourds, and eggplants. In addition they can also obtain from the forest such vegetables as bamboo shoots, the edible topmost and innermost frond of a palm, wild melinjo (Gnetum gnemon) and other kinds of leaves.

What about protein? "We can fish in the rivers, raise chickens and pigs and go hunting in the forest," said Yulius Loni, a 26- year-old farmer from Banjur village, 250 km from Ketapang. Also, farmers usually exchange their rubber for salted fish.

As for necessities such as sugar, salt and cigarettes, these are bought from a tauke (village merchant). Although the prices of these items have soared, the farmers are not feeling the impact of the hikes because their rubber has also risen in price.

"Before the crisis set in, rubber cost Rp 1,500 a kilo in our village. Now it is Rp 2,500. Prior to the crisis, a kilo of sugar cost Rp 1,500 and now it is Rp 2,500. So, irrespective of the crisis, a kilo of sugar remains equal to a kilo of rubber," said Remigius, a farmer and rubber tapper.

The above is what is happening to Dayak farmers in rural areas of West Kalimantan. How they are faring is typical of people in many areas of Kalimantan because most farmers in the four provinces till the land and tap rubber. Practically every household has a rubber holding, the only exception being those people whose land has been appropriated by plantation companies. People work on their land to ensure they and their families have sufficient supplies of rice every year. They use the income from rubber to buy other necessities.

Over the years rubber has become the backbone of most farmers' livelihood. In Banjur, for example, 10 people from 60 families have paid for their university degrees with income earned from rubber. Their parents relied on rubber to support them financially from their elementary school to university. In Simpang Hulu subdistrict in Ketapang district, there are now some 100 university graduates from farming families. Most of their parents are also rubber tappers.

According to P. Zacharias Lintas, a farmer's son and Catholic priest, the increase in the price of rubber indicates that the foundations of the local people's economy is strong. He agrees with Mubyarto, a professor of rural economics at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, who has long called for the development of a people's economy.

But a growing trend in Kalimantan is that many farmers have to turn their rubber plantations into oil palm plantations and change from rubber tappers into palm growers.

Zacharias opposes this. "People's rubber plantations must be fostered and developed. It is wrong to turn them into oil palm growers. These farmers are skilled at planting and tapping rubber because this skill has been passed on from one generation to another," he said.