Arya Dipa, Bandung – Farmers and activists in West Java have slammed the government for implementing agrarian policies that favor large-scale producers at the expense of small farmers.
They further charge that instead of providing for the general welfare, as intended in Basic Agrarian Law no. 5/1960, the policies have actually hurt local farmers.
A member of the People's Coalition for Agrarian Justice, Sapei Rusin, said that the executive, legislative and judicial institutions were undermining agrarian justice, evidenced by 44 government regulations that violated the spirit of the agrarian law.
"The policies have intensified and protracted agrarian conflicts and poverty in rural areas," Sapei said during a recent rally in Bandung. Many members of the agricultural workforce, he said, were left out in the cold because of a shortage of agrarian resources.
Pasundan Farmers Association secretary general Agustiana echoed this sentiment, saying that small farmers needed access to more land for cultivation.
"The Basic Agrarian Law explicitly contains points pertaining to the reservation, dominion and utilization of natural resources for the sake of the people. Why then have appropriate policies not been implemented?" she said.
According to the Agrarian Reform Consortium, policies that don't defend small farmers lead to conflicts that inevitably disadvantage them. During the United Indonesia Cabinet under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the consortium recorded 749 agrarian disputes across West Java. That figure was a stark increase from the 506 cases recorded for 2001.
According to Sapei, development projects in West Java such as the Cilamaya Port project, the Jatigede Dam, the Cisumdawu and Cikampek-Palimanan toll road projects, the Kertajati Airport and various industrial zones would reduce farmland significantly.
He said that the Cisumdawu (Cileunyi-Sumedang-Dawuan) toll road project had already converted some 1,149 hectares of land, while the Jatigede Dam project would eat up 6,783 hectares of farmland and forests.
The 2013 agricultural census conducted by the National Statistics Agency (BPS) showed a drastic drop in the number of farming families nationwide, from 31.17 million in 2003 to 26.13 million in 2013.
Official statistics from the West Java BPS released in March 2013 showed that as many as 1.79 million of the 4.5 million underprivileged people in the densest province in Indonesia lived in rural areas. As many as 2.58 million of the 3.5 million farming families in West Java are categorized as petty farmers, or those who own less than half a hectare of land.
"The provincial administration should conduct an independent and transparent audit on state-run agriculture company Perhutani as well as on land utility permit holders, so as to know the benefits they provide for people's welfare. The abandoned land should also be distributed to farmers," said Sapei.
He also urged the government to stop land and forest conversion, which was detrimental to the environment as well as to the agricultural sector. "Also stop criminalizing farmers who are fighting for their rights," said Sapei.