Indonesia faces serious challenges in agriculture

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah warned that the agricultural sector will face serious challenges which must be dealt with as the country heads towards economic globalization and free trade.

"The problems include the widening gaps between the growth in agriculture and other sectors, the widening deficit of the balance of payments in the overseas trade of food, the increasing number of small-scale farmers, environmental degradation, the declining of most commodity prices and the slow realization of agricultural land expansion," he said during the 13th national congress of the Institute of Indonesian Engineers on Monday night.

"These problems need our serious attention...because Indonesia is still an agrarian country after all," said the minister, who is a trained engineer. He did not, however, cite any figures to support his remarks.

Official statistics have projected that while the country's economy is to grow by 6.6 percent per annum in the coming five years, the agricultural sector is expected to grow a mere 2.4 percent every year.

Data from the Ministry of Agriculture reveals that in 1993 the agricultural sector, which contributed only about 18.5 percent to the gross domestic product, must support about 51.1 percent of the country's total families.

Small

Recent reports show that the number of small-scale farmers (defined as those who own less than 0.5 hectares of land) has escalated to about 12 million at present from 9.5 million last year.

This also means that out of all farmers surveyed by the government, about 51.6 percent are classified as being small- scale this year. The figure was only 50.9 percent last year.

Sjarifudin had conceded early this year that besides declining incomes for farmers, there is also a rise in the number of landless farmers, especially for those living in Java.

Arable land owned by Javanese farmers dropped by 16.4 percent to 4.6 million hectares in 1993 from the year before, the minister said in February.

Sjarifudin also said Monday that in order to meet these challenges the country must step up investments in agriculture to improve the sector's infrastructure, human resources and institutional development. (hdj)