Priest Y.B. Mangunwijaya joins farmers' protest

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Renowned writer and priest Y.B. Mangunwijaya joined hundreds of farmers and students from Gadjah Mada University here on Tuesday in a demonstration against perceived unnecessary intervention in farmers' lives.

He was seen wearing a farmer's triangular bamboo hat and a sarong at the protest at the university's School of Forestry that involved about 200 farmers from dozens of villages in Magelang regency. Farmers and students of the Alliance of Volunteers for Saving Nature (Arupa) unfurled posters, one which read, "Do not force farmers to buy fertilizer."

A survey from August to October by the Pesticide Action Network -- Indonesia, an organization focusing on farming, disclosed how many village cooperatives were no longer functioning.

Coordinator Riza V. Tjahjadi said cooperatives offered prices which were too low and they also lacked sufficient capital to buy farmers' crops. Farmers are instead selling their crops to either mill owners or loan sharks who determine prices.

The survey was carried out in West Sumatra, North Sumatra, Riau, West Java, Central Java, East Kalimantan and South Sulawesi.

The study was released in conjunction with World Food Day which fell on Friday Oct. 16. Also on Friday 150 students protested at the Yogyakarta governor's office. The member of MAKAN (literally eat, short for Community for Food Concern) said farmers had lost freedom to decide what crops they could plant.

On Tuesday a demonstrating farmer said, "The price of fertilizers has been arranged by a monopoly. The price of rice has been arranged. Then where is the value of the farmer?"

"Don't sacrifice farmers merely for the pride of self- sufficiency!" he said.

Mangunwijaya said his support for farmers was to realize the "people's sovereignty". "A people-oriented economy can only emerge if the people's dignity is valued by the government."

The former government repeatedly increased the producer floor price of unhusked rice for the benefit of farmers. But farmers have said they are suffering losses because of the low selling price of rice and the high price of fertilizers.

In 1985 former president Soeharto was rewarded by the Food and Agricultural Organization for achieving self-sufficiency in rice but since the early 1990s the country imported rice again. (23/swa/44/01)