THE FUTURE CHALLENGES OF
INDONESIAN AGRICULTURE
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NGO, The State, and The PeasantsThe existence of non governmental organizations (NGO) in the frame of rural development programs, espe-cially in agrarian sector, is not some-thing new. NGOs, either those posi-tioning themselves as supplements, partners, or the state substitutions, have triggered various criticisms, as well as complements, of a lot of dif-ferent parties. Various parties have been a priori saying that the existence of NGOs is actually of no solution to public matters, but exploiting the people's problems and dragging them into political issues, instead.
The state, as the mandated party to run and manage the wheel of gover-nance, is frequently considered failed in manifesting the welfare for the peo-ple. In the agrarian context, the policy of development tends to stand by the
international capitalists with a top-down beaurocratic approach model, and lacks attention to the capacity building for establishing the indepen-dence in rural development. It has al-so created the rural dependence upon the state, for example, the emerging agricultural revitalization issued by the cabinet of President Susilo Bam-bang Yudhoyono, which has stimu-lated various kinds of responses of the people.
Peasants have also been encountering a big problem, i.e. the imbalance between the conflicts and agrarian structure, as well as the missing sove-reignty to determine what to produce, how to produce, to whom the products are going to be sold, and how the system of the selling would be. The peasants are also losing their sove-reignty to access their need for food. The narrowing space of sovereignty
has caused their chances to determine the social and economic strategy which are in accordance with their needs weaker and more limited.
The Future Challenges of Indone-sian Agriculture
If, on the one hand, NGOs are consi-dered only selling poverty to donating institutions overseas, on the other hand, the state is considered failed in manifesting the welfare for the peo-ple, and the peasants are entrapped in various complicated problems that make them lose their sovereignty. Thus, what would the future of the Indonesian agriculture be like? The complexity of problems undergone has frequently created an assumption that Indonesian agriculture seems to have lost its future. Agriculture has frequently been considered unpro-misingly profitable, especially for the peasants as the subjects of the agri-cultural activities.
In order to see how the future of Indo-nesian agriculture would be like, we certainly need to take a look at how the performance of the respective ac-tors related, i.e.: NGOs, the state, as well as the peasants themselves. There is a tendency showing that, so far, NGOs and the state considered the
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essential agents in social changes, have not sufficiently accommodated themselves with sufficient knowledge, either macro or micro, on who is the beneficiary, which in this case is the society. The lack of such under-standing has made various policies and strategies formulated by NGOs and the state inappropriate in direct-ing the targets.
The sufficient knowledge on the
so-ciety would make us able to get clearer description on the maps of
problems going on, as well as to find the alternative solutions. The lack of thorough understanding of society, either macro or micro, as well as the changes occurring in it, has made us get frequently trapped in only one problem and neglect the others. In NGOs for instance, there is a tendency to only focus on "commercial" matters to mass media, whereas other problems which are frequently be-yond media's concern are actually of a similar degree of importance. In government level, the lack of know-ledge and concern on society, have also frequently caused the policies and the launching programs undirect-ed to the wishundirect-ed targets. In other words, the sufficient knowledge on society is a very valuable asset, espe-cially for NGOs and the state, when they are going to "invite" the people to
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"change." Such an understanding is, in turn, very essential in responding to the challenge of the Indonesian agri-culture in the future.
It is similarly elaborated by Hery Santoso who is recently holding the position of JAVLEC (Java Learning Center) Director, saying that the point of view of anthropologic romance on the people living nearby the woods that are humble, wise, and locally knowledgeable, yet marginal and lack opportunity, is a normal symptom in social researchers. The false under-standing on the real "portrait" of the people is learned to have caused the various empowering programs initia-ted by lots of parties including NGOs come into failure.
The penetration of capitalism has opened the threshold of old-value negotiation, even in some certain ca-ses, in order to actively get involved in the organizing process of daily life aspects of deep values. The local society with stabile structure of needs will, in turn, have to negotiate with the world, where identity and taste keep changing in accordance with the inte-rests of production and status. Hence, what is frequently thought as local knowledge, local wisdom, and all other local identities are of completed matters by no means, as people may
have assumed. Local knowledge, va-lue, and identity, nearly always under-go the process of reneunder-gotiation as well as reproduction, as the consequence of the active process as well as the involvement of the people in every single move of alternation.
The dynamism of the people is also "captured" by Yunita T. Winarno of the Department of Anthropology, the Faculty of Social and Politic Sciences, Indonesian University. The writer ex-plains that the practice of The Field School of Integrated Pest Control (SL PHT) is considered to have stimulated the peasants to say "no" in terms of controlling pest/disease with pesti-cide, when the attack of pest/disease is not very essential. Another impor-tant thing is the consciousness of the importance of careful observation, or in the jargon of peasants is called the importance of observing. Both of the things above are believed to be the beginning of the growth of the inde-pendence spirit. Peasants are creative and innovative creatures in coping with the problems overwhelming their lives. On the one hand, there is a pea-sants' dynamism in responding to the new ideas being introduced. Adopting new ideas means element addition to their thinking scheme, enriched with the feedback of their observing and learning results. On the other hand,
the peasants have not left their old ideas the way they like. Old ideas could reemerge and get stronger in certain circumstances.
Tri Hadiyanto Sasongko of AKA-TIGA discusses the relationship bet-ween the continuous agricultural ob-session and the food sovereignty programs by NGOs. Continuous agri-culture is believed to be one of the alternative ways to reach the food sovereignty, and on the contrary, food sovereignty is a condition considered to be strategic in order to guarantee the continuity of the agricultural fu-ture. Nevertheless, the practice of the continuous agriculture initiated by NGOs tends to focus merely on the as-pects of production and distribution, whereas the consumption aspect (food) still lacks concern.
Food is an unchangeable human basic need. Therefore, it is quite appro-priate if food and the consuming pat-tern going along with it are given a concern, time share, and energy, as greatly as the other aspects (product-ion and distribut(product-ion). As a matter of fact, in daily life, the three aspects (production, distribution, and con-sumption) are not only closely related to one another but also overlapped so that it is difficult to firmly separate them.
Still about food, Yusup Napiri Maguantara of AKATIGA elaborates that there is a close relationship bet-ween the nature's physical condition and the social structure surrounding a community. Such relationship needs concerning in the effort of under-standing the potencies of food criti-cality, as well as the overcoming guide. Aggregately, it is of no mistake to use the food surplus of a country as the indicator of the food stability. Yet, the achievement of the food stability in macro level does not mean that there is no problem of it in micro level, in household level. The writer has pointed out the irony that some re-gions undergoing food criticality are statistically surplus in food. Various parties including government as the policy maker need to pay attention to such kind of thing.
One of the government's policies ha-ving been the limelight is the agri-cultural revitalization. Revitalizing ru-ral and agriculturu-ral sectors is one of the strategies selected by the Cabinet of the United Indonesia (Kabinet Indonesia Bersatu), in the effort of manifesting the Indonesian People Development. Unfortunately, the ac-tivity planning is predictive and not based upon accurate data, so that the determined targets seem to be on the contrary with one another, specially
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on the land monopoly and the num-bers of peasants working in agri-cultural lands. Erizal Jamal of the Center for Social-Economic Analysis and Agricultural Policy, Department of Agriculture, is trying to view the op-portunity of improving the land mono-poly in peasant level, through a land consolidation commenced with the improvement of the land monopoly system/land tenure reform existing in peasant level. Such an effort could be a basic initiation for the sake of con-tinuous effort that enables peasants to get lands of certain width and of a certain space. Furthermore, such an effort is expected to be able to open the threshold of opportunity of other enterprises related to the business run by peasants.
Still discussing the policy, Syahyuti is trying to carry out a study on various fundamental problems as well as the policies having been formulated re-cently, by emphasizing the effort of integrating the landreform and non landreform aspects in the more ope-rational agrarian renewal concept. With all limited data as well as being burdened by a lot of problems, the po-licy of agricultural and rural deve-lopment, which have to be formulated and still run, is worried to have en-countered hindrances and possibly
been threatened as being unable to be operated. The concern towards the non landreform aspects in the agra-rian renewal concepts should also be concerned and balanced with the landreform aspects.
Unlike Erizal Jamal and Syahyuti dis-cussing the matters of policy, Dede Mulyanto of Department of Anthro-pology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Padjajaran University, fo-cuses his writing more on the future of Indonesian Peasants. He elaborates the activity searching for life in pea-sants of old age. Age is importantly related to the production process and the activity of life searching. People go through their old ages differently, depending especially on the social-economic background. In the level of poor peasants and labor peasants, getting older means the same as get-ting dragged out of working market. Getting older does not only mean get-ting deafer but also getget-ting more dif-ficult in searching for life.
The methodology segment of this edition presents Johan Iskandar, a research staff of the Research Center of Natural and Environmental Resour-ces, The Research Institute, Padjaja-ran University, describing the metho-dology of understanding the peasants'
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dynamic lives in managing their agri-culture. In his writing, the writer offers three kinds of approaches, i.e.: human ecology, agro-ecosystem, and the farming system. First, the ap-proach of human ecology could be used for studying the relationship between the population dynamics and the circumstances of the farming sys-tem. Second, the approach of agro-ecosystem analysis could be applied in order to analyze the varied sciences and the prompt assessment tech-niques towards the agricultural enter-prise system. Third, the approach of farming system could be used for spe-cifically analyzing the management of agricultural enterprises carried out by the peasants.
The Book Review in the journal of So-cial Analysis here presents the ela-boration by Tri Hadiyanto Sasong-ko on the book written by Khudori en-titled: "Lapar: Negeri Salah Urus!" ("Hungry: The Mismanaged Coun-try!"). The core of the book is the con-firmation that hunger does not merely happened owing to having no food, since hunger can even occur in a pros-perous country. This is parallel with the statement of a Nobel winner of Economy, 1998, Amartya Sen, on the importance of the access and the as-pect of freedom for determining the
food rather than the food availability. Sen has also pointed out that hunger or malnutrition happens not because of having no food but the inability to own food.
How come food prosperity exists on the one hand, while hunger and mal-nutrition occur on the other hand? Food has now been transforming into a commodity or commercial goods, so that a person or a group of people could make profit on it. That is why rich entrepreneurs compete to mono-polize the industry. The problem has later become more complicated when food and agriculture have to be libe-ralized and follow the market rule. With free market, the neo-liberalists force developing countries to libe-ralize their domestic markets. Through the force of IMF and the World Bank, through their credit gi-ving projects, such forces become more perfect. Owing to having no strong commitment to their people, the government of developing coun-tries could frequently do nothing. In such a condition, people and poor peasants become all alone.
Meanwhile, Dede Mulyanto dis-cusses a book entitled "Yang kuasa, Yang Tersisih, & Yang Tak Ber-daya: Demokrasi Yang Bagaimana di
Indonesia?" (The Authorized, The Ne-glected, & The Powerless: How is the democracy like in Indonesia?"), by Ina E. Slamet. The book describes how the power of global capitalism with its chronic hunger has exploited the remote places of Kalimantan, Su-lawesi, or Papua ever since the colo-nialism era up to now. They took the wealth away as much as they possibly could, and then they threw the gar-bage, poverty, descendant self-dig-nity, and the imbalanced social struc-ture to the surrounding circumstances away. The role of Ina E. Slamet as an anthropologist is very important in revealing the problems of being ne-glected undergone by the ethnic tribes in Papua. Yet, the reviewer reminds that the problem of being neglected in terms of social, economic, and politic is also undergone by some Javanese ethnics in which they politically mono-polize the center of political union called Indonesia. The abandoning process is indeed established in cities where hobos live under bridges of fly over, and house dragging is the sym-bol. Ina Slamet seems to be fully aware of it. Yet, the years of expe-rience in doing researches as well as living together with the rural ethnics of Papua make her focus her concern on being abandoned that keeps haunting the rural ethnics.
For the closing segment, Gunawan Wiradi questions whether the scien-tific activities in social sciences can "value free" or not. The writing is actually a paper of a seminar long in the past, yet the theme is considered relevant. In order to have no oppor-tunity to be bias, the writing is pu-blished in this journal precisely the same as the original, i.e. in English. The term hands-off policy is used to refer to the attitude of fully rejecting the in-fluences of value and ideology in scientific activities. Meanwhile,
hands-in policy is used to refer to the attitude of accepting the fact that in practice, social sciences are abso-lutely not likely "value free". The ar-gument on the two different points of view above has never been through till now.
The discourse on the meaning of "ideology" itself as well as its deve-lopment is a simple matter by no means, since it is related to theori-zation on the high level of abstraction or philosophy. The writing might seem "narrow", as it only uses some limited literature. Nevertheless, it is a very valuable contribution, especially to young researchers that should start thinking of the implications of their re-searches, not only for the sake of science but also for the facts of social
lives. At the end of his writing, Guna-wan Wiradi suggests young resear-chers be able to develop themselves
as well as develop their under-standing through extensive reading.
[Editor]
