Jakarta – Farmers called on the government to carry out agrarian reform during a protest near the Arjuna Wiwaha Monument in Central Jakarta on Tuesday to mark this year's National Farmers' Day.
Indonesian Farmers Union (SPI) chairman Henry Saragih said during the protest that the government must carry out agrarian reform by redistributing land to create justice for farmers.
Henry said ??farmers' rice fields have decreased drastically, from 8 to 9 million hectares to around 7 million hectares, adding that the number of subsistence farmers with land ownership of less than 0.5 hectares has increased in the last decade.
"Now the number of small farmers is more than 16 million people. This means that there has been an increase of 2 million farmers who used to have enough land for farming but now do not," said Henry on Tuesday, as quoted by Kompas.
Henry's statement is aligned with Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data in 2023, which recorded that the number of small-scale farmers who own land less than 0.5 ha increased from 14.25 million people in 2013 to 16.89 million people in 2023.
With the small plots of land, farmers can barely harvest enough for subsidence, battling to maintain a decent living.
The agrarian reform agenda is based on the 1960 Agrarian Law, which aimed to restructure ownership and control of land so farmers can have larger farming plots, leading to better welfare for farmers. However, the BPS data shows that this has not happened, raising calls from farmers to the government to address the issue.
The farmers also criticized large corporations' control of farmers' land in the name of the national strategic projects (PSN).
"The number of agrarian conflicts is increasing as PSN progress," Henry said.
Some PSN have triggered conflicts between the government and farmers, such as the construction of the Yogyakarta International Airport in Kulon Progo, Yogyakarta, and the mining of andesite in Wadas in Purworejo, Central Java for the construction of the Bener Dam.
The farmers also demanded that the government resolve the agrarian conflict. (jan)