The shackles of the farming life

By Muyanja Aba Ssenyonga

YOGYAKARTA (JP): One day during a break in a Bahasa Indonesia class there was a seemingly relaxed boy in his late teens idling away under the acacia shade on the campus grounds.

He was slightly weighed down by a school bag strapped on his slim slightly stooping shoulders; his pouted lips exhaled the last puff on a butt of a cigarette.

As often is the case hereabouts, introducing each other's particulars, encompassing names, country of origin and religion, became the pacesetter.

The newly won pal was majoring in English, then barely more than a sophomore in the school of letters. His dwelling was in the vicinity of the campus, but uncharacteristically showed displeasure upon the suggestion of paying him a visit.

Asked about the means of livelihood of his father, hesitation was very visible in his glistening eyes, but eventually he divulged in a low subdued tone that his father was wresting a living from an acreage of land, on the outskirts of Yogyakarta city.

The main crop was paddy with various plants serving as secondary crops (palawija). He revealed happiness that emanated from the realization of his father's promise that had he to perform excellently and qualify for Gadjah Mada University here, his father would help him with Rp 100,000 for each semester.

It was a little startling to find a father contributing barely half of the cost for the education of his son's, moreover, his eldest. Where else would he turn for the remainder?

But given the dynamics that highlight the livelihood of small farmers, credit is due to such a father and his brethren for the bravery even to raise the much they do for their offspring.

The student's intention was to master English, so he could serve as a part-time teacher in one of the numerous English academies in this city. But of course less than a year's study at the university wasn't yet sufficient to equip him with the needed experience and valor.

His hope, maybe consolation as well, was to accomplish that in a year or so.

Nothing arouses more consternation than the constancy of the small farmers' lot amidst rampant changes: at the periphery of things then, still languishing there, and possibly will be, for sometime to come, unless draconian and drastic measures, though belated, salvage him.

Despite the hike in prices of many other vital items in our lives, ex-farm prices have barely changed. The downside to such a situation is that it is at the expense of the sector of our population that can barely shoulder it, while the main beneficiaries are well-to-do broad-shouldered members of society.

Factors attributable to the unfair farmer output prices range from administered prices on farmers' output that keeps the farmer's revenue constant, despite spiraling inflation and the government subsidy on farm input prices implying that stable but low output prices are offset by low cost of production.

Also, the government is resolved to keep urban workers and dwellers satisfied by providing low priced consumer commodities in sufficient quantities, averting any strikes that might jeopardize economic stability and growth.

That tempers the justification for the urban workers and dwellers to demand higher pay.

Any stability in output prices in a world of even creeping inflation, translates into lower real incomes and subsequent diminishing purchasing power, which underlies many a father's inability to make both ends meet.

Come harvest time and all the farmers enjoy is money illusion. The lion's share of the output is eaten up in repaying input loans, landlord's share and the rest gobbled up by unscrupulous village cooperatives. Moreover, the state's commitment to stabilizing foodstuff prices through "market operations", bolstered by importation, precludes any possibility for fair farm output prices. The noose on the farmer has never been tighter.

It is another story if the government's objective underlying such measures is to satisfy the formal sector thereby averting clamors for higher pay.

Cheap foodstuffs make middle and high-income earners enjoy windfalls of consumers' surplus.

Meanwhile the farmer's normal life is often characterized by high illiquidity, inability to educate his children, the family ever in brawls -- sparked off and sustained by pervasive inadequacy and deprivation.

Keeping prices of farm products down is politically sound in the short and medium-term to satisfy the well-organized industrial and urban workforce, as lack of it might spell disaster.

Yet the achievement of that at the cost of shelving the interests of the largest section of the population signals a potentially more latent long-term economic Pandora's box.

Implications encompass high-income inequality, generally low purchasing power and adverse feedback effects on the sustainability of the economy.

The farmer is still waiting patiently for the day when the harped upon fruits of independence diminish the prevalent suffering punctuating his daily life.

But like any man with nothing but hope to hang on, his patience might one day reach the end of the tether. God forbid the day when all farmers leave the fields saying, "To hell with the ani-ani (reaping knife), golok (machete), and the plow"!

The writer is a postgraduate student of economics at the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.