Indra Lubis1 and J.J. Polong2

Background

Indonesia is an agrarian country. Around 70% of 230 million people are living in the countryside and their livelihoods depend on farming, fishing and other jobs related to agriculture. The majority lives in poverty and it has been so ever since the independence of Indonesia from the old model of colonialization in 1945. In other words, we can say that after 65 years development just benefits a small percentage of the Indonesian people. Especially for the last 45 years, Indonesia has been following neoliberal policies as the basic platform of the government policies.

To give a brief historical account, the first law was issued just after Indonesian president Soeharto took power, and was the Foreign Investment Law (Law No. 1/1967). Later on followed the laws on plantation, oil and gas and other laws related to agrarian resources or natural wealth. All these policies and political pressure were in contradiction with previous government policies such as agrarian reform, nationalization of foreign companies, democratic elections, etc.

On October 1988—ten years before Soeharto stepped down—the IMF and the World Bank put big pressure on the Indonesian government to implement the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The main pillars of SAP were privatization, trade liberalization and governance reform. And later, just after the Asian crisis in October, 1997, Indonesia signed the Letter of Intent (LOI) with the IMF on the macroeconomic policies that would provide the supportive framework for restructuring the financial sector and putting in place wide-ranging structural reforms. Again and again, the structural reforms in LOI with IMF are on Foreign Trade Investment, Deregulation and Privatization, and the Environment and Social Safety Net. In the letter was stated the alleviation of poverty in Indonesia

Before this Indonesia was one of the first countries to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994 and ratified the conclusions of Uruguay round with Law No. 7/1994 which it started to implement in January 1995. As we all know one agreement in the WTO is the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) with three main pillars: Increasing market access, reducing domestic support, and export competition.

A specific project on land but related to the neoliberal policies was implemented in Indonesia since 1994. Land Administration Project (LAP) is a project introduced by the World Bank. The basic idea of this project is to implement the land market system in Indonesia.3

All these policies, over the last 45 years, have always been claimed to be meant to alleviate poverty by increasing economic growth. But the end results until now have been the deep poverty in which the majority of the Indonesian people (which mostly are peasants) live. Peasants lost their means of production (land, water, seeds, biodiversity), shifting to a high cost agriculture production system, increasing the migration of the countryside people to the cities, and to work as domestic workers in many foreign countries. The report of Indonesian Migrant Union (SBMI) states that around 5-6 million Indonesians work as migrant workers of which almost 90% came from rural areas. In Hong Kong more than 100,000 Indonesians work as domestic migrant workers. There is no other choice for them due to the limitation of available land in their villages.4

The link of the past policies and the food price crisis

Let us take a look at the current global food price crisis phenomena which is present in Indonesia too and its link with past policies on agriculture. The food crisis became the “kick off” for other crises that later followed such as the climate, energy, and economic crisis.

Regarding the food crises, if we elaborate on it, actually it was not due to the lack of production nor a sudden increase of demand. The real global situation during 2006-2007 was the skyrocketing of the food prices. As we have seen, the price of tortilla in Mexico increased 60%. In Indonesia the price of rice was increased up to 62,5% (from Rp. 4,000 to Rp. 6,500) during the crisis. The price of cooking oil (a product from palm oil) was increased up to 43% (up to Rp. 15,000) in Indonesia. For soybean the price skyrocketed up to 200%. It was the highest price during the last 24 years.5 There are thousands of other cases in many countries. As the case in Mexico, it happened because there is a “competition” between the use of corn as food and as biofuel. The production of corn is in the hands of few TNCs as well.

Let us see it a bit more deeply in the case of soybean in Indonesia. Soybean is one of the staple grains to make meals like tofu and tempe (with fermented soya). National consumption of soybean in Indonesia is 2,015,000 tons and more than a half are imported (1,307,000 tons). The import policy makes Indonesia loose at least Rp. 3 trillion each year (3,34 million USD).6 This situation appeared after the government reduced their support to soybean farmers during the 1980s and 90s. During the increasing of soybean price, Cargill (US-based TNC)—the company which has the largest soya plantations in Brazil and one of four importer companies in Indonesia—kept more than 13,000 tons of soybeans in their storage at East Java province of Indonesia.7 Undoubtedly, the price inflation stems partly from speculation by powerful cartels of wholesalers at a time of tightening supplies.

At the beginning, this phenomenon took place in many countries and the UN said that the food crisis was due to weather-related problems such as drought. But later many studies and research showed the real situation in the global food system.

As Aileen Kwa from South Centre (2008) said, the high food prices that have sparked riots in many parts of the developing world—from Indonesia, India and Bangladesh to Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti—should come as no surprise. These are only the latest in a series of events many developing countries have suffered as a result of opening their borders and neglecting domestic agriculture.8

In the case of Indonesia—as the implication of ratifying the WTO since September 1998-December 1999—before the current crisis the rice import tariff in Indonesia was zero percent (O%) !!! Later the tariff was less then 10%. This tariff policy implies that imported rice floods the local market and destroys the price of domestic production.

Currently, the Indonesian government still maintains this imported rice policy to ensure a cheap rice price and thus make sure the poor in the cities can buy it.

Trade liberalization not only affected the majority of Indonesian peasants but also has caused many countries in Asia as well as other peasants worldwide to suffer, and be malnourished and poor. The state disavowed their obligation to serve the need and the right of peoples under the globalized agriculture model system.9

Those structural programs and trade liberalization have been heavily criticized for many years for resulting in poverty. In addition, for developing or third world countries, there has been an increased dependency on the richer nations. This is despite the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank’s claim that they will reduce poverty.

The claim is paradoxical with the situation of global food price crises as shown above compared with their claim before.

Ever since a few years before, SPI along with other social movements in Indonesia struggled against the opening market of agriculture products. SPI has risen up to say that the rural crisis is, to a large extent, the result of ongoing neo-liberal structural adjustment policies and trade liberalization pushed especially by the developed countries, which destroy peasant-based food production and turn large numbers of countries from net food producers into net food importers, making them heavily dependent on international markets. This ongoing deregulation of agricultural markets combined with speculative capital coming from financial markets caused huge speculation on food prices. It destabilized domestic markets, throwing millions more into hunger and poverty. Governments have put the dogma of the free market above peoples’ needs. It is now evident that this ideology leads only to bankruptcy and poverty.

Increasing investment on land for food

The multiple global crises that have erupted are suddenly originating a new trend to legitimize global policies towards buying up land for outsourced food production. Land as part of the sovereignity symbol of one country is now opening to international investment in many countries especially in developing countries. Some elements such as the rate of return in agriculture, the global price crisis and an increasing demand in the future have posed a big challenge to many countries and transnational companies to get a big profit from food production.

Basically, landgrabbing or large-scale land acquisition is not really a new trend in the history of world economy. It became a basis of purpose during the colonization era in the past. All of colonial countries used the land in the South to produce materials to serve the needs in their country.

The expansions of plantations in Indonesia started already with the colonization by the Dutch. At the beginning, plantations were meant to produce tobacco, tea, cocoa and rubber. Since the 1970s, large-scale palm oil plantations took over and there was an expansion of rubber plantations, as well. After the deepening of neoliberal policies in Indonesia, more foreign companies started grabbing the land. Now the companies come mostly from Malaysia and Singapore.

Following the previous expansion of palm oil plantations (of which the private companies own now at least 3,3 million ha from a total of 7,125,331 ha), a company from Bin Laden group from Saudi Arabia planned to invest USD 4 billion in Papua and South East and North Sulawesi. But because of huge protests the project has not moved forward yet. The current policies are basically still based on the belief of the importance of foreign investment. As Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono—Indonesian president—said, Indonesia is encouraging foreign and local investors to lease huge swathes of fertile land from the countryside and help make the country a major food producer. One point six million ha of land has been prepared for lease.10

The spirit to serve the global food consumption is contradictory with the land owned by small farmers in Indonesia. In 2003, the Indonesian Statistic Centre Bureau stated that the majority (56,5%) of Indonesian farmers have only 0,5 ha of land. This number has increased 16% during the last 20 years.11

The growing of large-scale plantations for agrofuel will have an effect to secure food production and the food price. Henry Saragih of LVC said: “There will be a race between human and machine in the future.” However, agrofuels don’t just drive up food prices, they concentrate corporate monopoly power and pull our food and fuels system under one giant industrial roof.12

SPI believes that this will keep an unjust world. The large-scale land acquisitions can result in local people losing access to the resources on which they depend for their food security and livelihoods. Small family farmers, peasants, indigenous people, fisherfolk and other marginal sectors will lose their basic production means. Local community will be directly dispossessed of the land they live on. In fact for most peasant and indigenous people, land is considered to be the foundation of society, culture and life.

The current global tendency on large-scale land acquisition will create a conflict between peasants, small farmers, landless, farmworkers and indigenous people with TNC’s. Losing the land under the aforementioned development is on account of the reduction of government support because IFIs policies on structural adjustment, and now other policies in the name of food production and agrofuel, are likely to create a big tension in rural areas.

Agrarian reform, peasant rights and building a sustainable agriculture

Some issues carried by SPI are to encourage the implementation of agrarian reform, promote the rights of the peasants and build an alternative to the current agriculture model system. Agrarian reform is a corrective effort to rearrange the agrarian structure gap, which allows the exploitation of man by his fellow man, to order a new structure based on social justice. The main goal is to achieve a situation where there is no excessive concentration in the control of and using up agrarian resources in the hands of few people.13

The struggle on agrarian reform was as basic issue for peasant organizations in Indonesia. As explained above, the unjust situation over the land has created an extensive number of conflicts, especially in the provinces where there are large plantations such as Sumatera, Kalimantan, Java, Sulawesi and Papua. Many peasants have died and been jailed during their struggles. In 2008, there were 63 cases of agrarian conflicts identified by SPI in which 312 people were criminalized because of their struggle.

SPI initiated the Declaration of Peasant Rights in the year 2000. Through a national process along with NGOs close to social movements and other organizations, SPI pushed forward this agenda toward the recognition of the rights of the peasants in Indonesia. Together with La Vía Campesina—an International Peasant Movement—SPI led the lobbying process at international level and built the campaign across continent to achieve an International Convention on Rights of the Peasants. Recently, at the beginning of this year, Olivier De Schutter (Special Rapporteur of UN Human Rights Commission) included the Rights of the Peasants as proposed by La Vía Campesina in an annex of his report. Now the draft is being processed in the UN Human Rights Commission.

At the national level, SPI has been striving to gain support from the Ministry of Law and Human Rights. The challenge at the national level is Law no. 39, year 1999, on Human Rights. The peasant is not classified as a vulnerable group to human rights violations. As a national body, KOMNAS HAM (The National Commission on Human Rights) endorses SPI in the struggle to gain a high credibility on the issue of the rights of the peasants. Through its function, SPI expects the commission to produce an academic script that would serve as a recommendation to the revision of National law on Human rights.14

As the alternative, one of SPI tasks is to push forward to expand a sustainable farming by establishing Pusdiklat (Centre for Learning and Training) of organic farming and sustainable agriculture. The establishment of Pusdiklat is one of our numberless efforts against the current agribusiness model that is oppressing, destructing the environment, annihilating biodiversity and putting aside local wisdom.15

There is a national Pusdiklat base in Bogor West Java. Besides SPI has also set up a training centre in some provinces, i.e., North Sumatera, West Sumatera, and Aceh. The centres at the provincial level have the mission to push forward the expanding of sustainable agriculture and organic farming in their respective provinces.

Training is regularly organized at national level with the participation of SPI members from all provinces. The main national training will take 2 months per period. It is organized 3-4 times a year. Since 2008, the national training system has increased the implementation of organic farming at the local level, Hundreds of cadres are working on their respective farms relying on the experiences gained during their training time.

La Vía Campesina proposal

La Vía Campesina, an international peasant movement, has been working to address the situation globally, with members in 70 countries—this figure includes over 200 million members worldwide. We were there during the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle, in Cancun and in Hong Kong. We bring the voice of small family farmers, peasants, landless, farm workers, and indigenous people who believe we should feed the world and not the TNCs.

We need a reorientation of the food system towards food sovereignty. We want the peasant model of sustainable food production to be recognized as an answer to the climate and food price crises.16 Since the beginning of the world struggle against hunger and malnutrition during World Food Summit on 1996, La Vía Campesina has been promoting the concept of food sovereignty.

Food sovereignty is not only the demand of the peasant movement but has already become a common agenda among the social movements since the Nyeleni Forum in Sélingué, Mali on February 2007. Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically, sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users. Food sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies, and markets, empowering peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, traditional fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes and generations.17

THE ORGANIC FARMER MARKET IN THAILAND: AN INTERACTIVE PLATFORM FOR PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS