Food Reflection
Maret 04, 2008
API thanked to The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Right Association (PHBI) which had already written the chronological facts about normative meaning of food sovereignty that correlated to the chronological events and facts of an organization of United Nation about university of human right, especially Ecosob right and agrarian conflict record. It caused of poverty in the villages related to sectarian policy and asked for the government's responsibility, particularly, the responsibility for giving human right to citizen, such as food and land sovereignty. I was very important because 70% of Indonesian were farmers.
Some experiences showed that both before and after human right declaration was signed, much impunity, genocide, razes, issue, conflict among countries caused of ideology, religion, and poverty had been accruing. Those affect the greediness of industrial countries to exploit natural resources in sour then world where the development countries were located.
Food day on 16 October, 2006 was celebrated by people all over the world. FAO took the theme "Investing in agriculture for food security". This theme it was translated into "develop village based food independent". It was done by Indonesian agriculture department.
Themes of world food day were about poverty, hunger and food security. Critics related to that concept were delivered by La via Compesina who used theme "food sovereignty". The people around the world were 6.5 billion. It would increase became 8.5 billion in 2025. Could our earth give enough food for those people?
The fact shows that every seven minutes, children under ten die because of hunger and 840 million people suffer worst nutrition. What are the causes?
a. Production resources, such as soil, water, plants, fish, and air were polluted because to much fertilized and chemical pesticide that used for farming
b. Distraction and the decreasing support for agriculture, such as irrigation of 40% to 60%
c. Narrower of farm or farm conversion to non agriculture which increase rapidly
d. Demography pressure, because they try to have 16 species for food panting. However, there are 3000 species.
e. Effects of politic protection and subsidy. Powerful countries have food surplus. Letter on, they distribute it to the market by using dumping price. For food import countries, this condition is beneficial.
f. The effects for development counties by using the same commodity will give disadvantages.
Firstly, it is the impact of food import is so cheap, local farmer products are not competitive. The effect which taken by government is to import almost every thing by creating some reasons. Food is import substitution commodity that gives foreign exchange income. It is very important for farmers and millions of workers to continue their life.
World condition shows the increase of food needs. 85% of food needs come from development and poor countries. The increase of food production comes from powerful countries because they hold 65% of food growth due to technology improvement and genetic manipulation.
That situation has correlation to food sovereignty in development countries. Food needs influence world food movement. The market condition in the world can be explained by demand (the change of rice market). Table I explained how those changes in the best ten countries related to the production, import and export happen. The table also explained that rice producers, importer and exporter in international market don't have a change (look at the list the best ten countries in producing, importing and exporting in huge scale at FAO database).
Background that explained how Indonesian government to be dominant importer in the world was could be explained in negotiation process to IMF in 1997. IMF pressured Indonesian government to create many kinds of price control and distribution control to all agriculture products were deleted, import limitation of agriculture products was also deleted, and did some privacy to Bulog.
That process was write a Memorandum of Economic and Financial policy (MEFP) that published integrate to Letter of Intent (LOI) between Indonesian government and IMF on 31 October, 2007. On 41st paragraph it is content of structural reformation and privatization in MEFP. Indonesian government would not control agriculture rice concept rice, sugar and tobacco price. On first January 2007, rice, sugar and tobacco price were increased due to IMF intimidation. Those report occurred integrate with MEFP's signature on 24 June, 1998.
Food is import commodity and Indonesian foreign exchange resource. However, it depends on millions of Indonesian's farmers and workers; the impact of neo-liberal policy is poverty and hunger for Indonesian.
For Food: Strategy to Agrarian Reform
Food is primary needs for human being; therefore, food issues are so closed to individual, family, and society (human right). Food sovereignty is nation's right. Monopoly and exploitation for food are not relevant to human right.
Nation food sovereignty can be realized by available food and nutrition. Nevertheless, supporting aspects such as producing, distributing and consuming for food, on the other side, it impacts to level of society's ability in consuming, the condition of individual and family. Accessibility everyone to food, related to give a change for everyone and family to get food.
The important thing of nation food sovereignty is how a country fulfills food needs for its citizen, especially for poor one based on the food's quantity, quality, price, continuity, and stability. The facts show that it isn't all of countries; particularly for the poor one has food right to consume it.
In Indonesian, basic fundamental to realize right of food is done by agrarian reformation for little family and poor farmers. How come? Dominant reason is to increase little farmers about 2.6%. It increases from 18.8 million of little farmers in 1993 to 13.7 millions. 24.3 millions of farmers to use land based farmers, 20.1 millions (82.7%) are poor ones. Most of Indonesian poor farmers are planting rice/Khudori's plants (Opinion section, Kompas, January 8, 2007 edition)
Is this condition a basic for Indonesian government to import 2 millions ton of rice per year? If the answer is "yes" it means that Indonesian government has lied and broken Ecosoc right because the equivalency of 2 millions tons of rice is 6 million/ha which is needed by 666.000 little farmers.
Based on import budget, Indonesian government can allocated the budget for agrarian reformation in villages. However, Indonesian government is trapped to free trade orientation because financial architecture and politician do not intent to realize agrarian reformation. Based on those chronological facts, it can be concluded policy force through a chain packet that is offered by multilateral financial department is human right violation. However, who are brief persons to against the core power of world capitalism (World Bank and IMF)?
A book written by PHBI team (Food sovereignty Assistance) is too closed to the politics judicial frame work of both international and national low. Actually, there is situation of law in Indonesia. If the writing is completed by sociology and anthropology analysis, it will be rich sense that view disable situation and the limitation happened to farmers and little farmers.
Green revolution failure to increase rice production and farmers earning explained us related to the lackness of Indonesian government's sense about which Indonesian farmers were. Indonesian farmers ha already trained to face the economic pressure. It has happened since Japanese exploitation in Indonesia. It was true that 28th generation had based on UUPA No. 5 1960 to carry out our agriculture industrial politic media. Next generation (45th generation) had established economic foundation by using foreign investment strategy. It started to exploit cognitive. Japanese exploitation generation was forced to learn dualism economics. Firstly, it attempted modern agriculture for export. Next, it attempted subsistent agriculture. Dutch colonial spirit was also written in water power resource law, forestry law, mining law, and capital investment law.
When it was a forced planting, dualism has built in economics and socials in farmers; life. It had already accrued. In economic, both modern-exports based colonial farming and traditional farming did not run equivalently. In society, it impacted dualism life style. Those were Dutch and Indonesian one.
Forced planting system did not delete the dualism such as deleting conventional agriculture system. However, it had used at present. One way to do so was to manage farmer work system and conventional agriculture's land. Therefore, conventional social-economic supported colonial economic. Traditional life style supported commercial export based modern economic.
Why did economic need traditional economic-social? It was a Dutch's strategy to expand its colonial economic (it was caused the export commodity in the world was high). Traditional social-economic was easily contaminated (land mobilization and workers) to joint the expansion. If the situation was changed, the weakness of colonial economic (it was caused of world price fluctuation) would substitute by reinforcing traditional, traditional farming was necessary variable (Diah Laksmi, Javanese Farmer Strategy, Free Journals).
In this case, we understand the circumstance of Indonesian Agriculture policy which tries to contaminate Indonesia villagers. The price should be paid is proved by the increasing of poor citizen, limited food in wide spectrum in the society. It is not different to the forced planting system, just like a song "you make it started. You make it finished), you make a promise. You betray it or similar spirit, but different.
By Muhammad Nuruddin, He is API's General Secretary. This Journal is taken from a journal which is delivered by book exhibition Right to Food from justifiability of Agrarian Reform, by PHBI and University of Oslo, Norwegian.