When Rice No Longer Means Prosperity
A smallholding farmer will die as a smallholding farmer. This life cycle, of the farmers who sweat under the sun to provide food for the country, should be stopped. If rice farming no longer offers prosperity, who would want to become a farmer?
Possessing farming knowledge, strength, and land were not enough to lure Ahmad Syifa, 29, to work in a paddy field as a rice farmer. The graduate of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) still depends on his job as a teacher at a vocational school in Subang, West Java, for his future.
To support his daily needs, he also cultivates fish.
After teaching, Syifa went to his balong, a fish hatchery in Jabong, Subang district,Monday afternoon. Syifa produces tilapia fry in the hatchery pond for supplying to floating fish farms at Jatiluhur dam and Cirata dam in Purwakarta, West Java.
For Syifa, cultivating rice no longer promises profits, despite the fact that the 1.7-hectare rice farm he inherited from his parents are larger than typical farms, which are less than 0.5 hectares. His rice fields are still planted with rice or glutinous rice, but he has asked his brother Masruhi, 42, to manage the rice fields. Rice farming carries a greater risk as production becomes more uncertain.
Masruhi also cannot rely on farming to meet the needs of his wife and three children. Due to the sharp drop in last season’s harvest, he had to borrow money to cover his farming costs of about Rp 8 million per hectare. A normal harvest yields6 tons per hectare, but an infestation of dwarf grass caused a decline in the harvest to only 1.8 tons per hectare.
Waking up at 4 a.m., Masruhi helps his wife prepare uduk rice (rice cooked in coconut milk with side dishes), and then goes to the rice fields at 7 a.m. Returning from the rice fields at 2 p.m., Masruhi seeks additional income by peddling gold jewelry on his motorbike from village to village in the borderlands of Subang and Indramayu.
Syifa is actually entitled to half of Masruhi\'s net harvest in accordance with maro, a profit-sharing contract between a farm owner and tenant. However, last season, Syifa decided not to take his share because of the poor harvest. He felt sad seeing Masruhi, who had toiled in the fields for four months, gain minimal results that left him with a large debt.
In addition to the inheritance system that diminishes the acreage of paddy fields, rice farmers are also vulnerable to losses caused not only by the fluctuating quality and quantity of their harvests, but also by falling rice prices. In the end, with such a condition, rice farming is no longer interesting to the younger generation.
This condition has also encouraged Winarni, 23, to leave his village in Gegesik, Cirebon regency. He is looking for a job in Jakarta while Kaharudin, 27, his brother, has chosen to take odd jobs instead of sweating in the fields inherited from their parents.
Wakini, 50, a farmer in Wonosari village, Gading Rejo subdistrict, Pringsewu, Lampung, said he did not want his son to become a farmer like himself. He said that managing a 2,000-square-meter rice farm did not generate a good income.
During this year\'s gadu season, for example, Wakini produced 1.5 tons of unhusked rice. He kept 800 kilograms of the harvest for his family and sold the rest, making proceeds of merely Rp 2.8 million.
The money will be used for next planting season and to meet the family’s needs for the next four months. Knowing the difficulties of life as a farmer, Wakini does not want his son to also be a farmer. "I don’t want my children to have a hard life. I hope they can work elsewhere with a decent salary," he said.
Wakini\'s first child chose to work as an itinerant laborer in Tangerang, Banten. His second child is still studying at one of the vocational schools in Pringsewu.
Another farmer, Marijo, 51, said that with the lack of young people interested in farming, finding field laborers had become more difficult. At his age, Marijo is unable to do all the work at his 2,500 sqm rice farm.
"In the past, I could ask neighbors to work in the rice fields. But now I must seek workers from other villages. I usually have to wait for my turn," he said.
Based on the 2013 Agriculture Census, the total number of farmers across all agricultural subsectors accounted for 26.1 million households. In the food crop subsector, farmers accounted for 17.7 million households. Most of these are smallholding farmers. As for field laborers, they accounted for more than 5 million households.
The2014 Rice and Coarse GrainSurvey of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) showed that the population of rice farmers aged 35 years and under had fallen from 25.93 percent to 8.14 percent in the 2008-2014period, while farmers aged 50 years and over had increased from 20.1 percent to 52 percent.
According Institute for Ecosoc Rights researcher Sri Palupi, the increasingly unattractive agriculture sector is being abandoned by older farmers while the younger generation shows no interest in it at all.This is worrying, because farmers are the backbone of the nation’s food supply.
"Farmers have been bankrupt for a long time. Farmers still continue farming just because they have no other choice. This situation threatens our food sovereignty," Palupi said. The low welfare of farmers and farm laborers, Palupi added, was a long-standing problem. However, it continues to grow because the agricultural policy, which is actually a continuation of previous policies, has not been evaluated, even though it has proven to fail.
"This should be used as an opportunity to evaluate the agricultural sector policy. The agricultural sector must be protected. Farmers have the right to prosper," Palupi said.
(MKN/VIO/BKY/IKI/LAS)