Revolusi Hijau Gagal Sejahterakan Petani
Februari 08, 2009
The regime has been replaced, but the fate of peasants who are the biggest population in this republic was stay the same. In fact, Politic and national leadership reformation didn’t give any positive result with the peasant prosperity. They face never ending suffering and difficulties. it was not only from pressure inside but also over the length and breadth of pressure as like government and economical situation which were never on the peasant side.The new order has taken this country into the development flow that focus on the growth and its follows bt the impact of the this scheme. One of it is to push this country to becomes industrial country.
As a consequence, the traditional agriculture was driven into the industrial agriculture. Which were in 1970s came to be called Green Revolution of Indonesia known as Bimas. The authority were flat out to makeof implement this program. Inside, there was subsidy for agriculture fertilizer credit, determining of row rice price, the established of Bulog, developing the irrigation system from foreign loan.
Unfortunately, in the Bimas program, the peasant was only viewed as the object that has always to obey the rulers’ will. The peasant no longer has the right to determining technology and production. Everything must be under the same roof, Bimas.
After Bimas consider failing to grow the food plant of agrarian sector, the government has introduced Inmas. With additional program of infectant and plant disease overcoming program, Inmas was actually almost the same with Bimas.
Inmas and Bima can be said as success if it was viewed from the applied growth paradigm. In the 1980s the productivity was rise up to double than in the 1960s. Moreover, in the 1985 Indonesia has become the rice self sufficient country for four years. But after that, this country back to become the biggest imported country until nowadays.
In the package regulation of Inmas and Bimas, the peasant order to obey those set in the production system. Applying chemical fertilizer, monoculture, certain label of seed, and standardized pesticide were all has made the peasant lie with seed, fertilizer and pesticide.
What made it worse was the diversity of local seed has no longer on the peasant hand. Before the green revolution, we had already almost 10.000 varieties of rice local seeds. All of the seeds that were kept in the IRRI (international Rice Research Institute) of Philippine now are belong to USA. Nowadays, those seeds were just for about 25 left in Indonesia.
The peasant’s wise were cut by the monoculture. Independency was replaced by the dependency. Social and environment equilibrium were disturbed through the use of chemical and inorganic materials as chemical fertilizer, insecticide, pesticide, fungicide, and herbicide.
Tens of years, the peasant were only fulfill the obligation by what the authority commanded trough the extended field officer and field officer for agriculture. The peasants were only as the program implementer on their own land. The common local leadership of peasant has been vanished and so the teaching and learning process among them. The traditional structure organization was gone became uniform. It was formed by the authority, not by their own awareness.
Tens of years, the peasant were became deafute that can only hear without speak up their mind. As a consequence, there were never existing strong, independent, solid and had a bargain position in making economical and political decision that fight for peasant prosperity of peasant organizations.
That situation was taking place up to now. Peasants were always being marginalized. They didn’t get their rights, not even the right for asking the rulers to fulfill their promised about the row rice price of the President Instruction.
Being introduced of the brand new seed was about to leaving the women’s role for selecting seed of farming effort in their household and so the for the harvest process, it was done mechanically.
Growth as the jargon of Development has born many problems. The hardest problem was lateral discrepancy between rural peasant and city society. The owner of new order regime always used trickle down effect theory to deceive of their regulation. It was stated that the prosperity of wealthy people in the city will trickle down to poor people both in the village and town.
Unfortunately, after new order regime has been replaced with transition regime, and now has become reformation regime, the trickle down has been promised did never exist. Moreover, the poor people prosperity even being adsorbed upward.
Watching these, it was clear that the policy of agriculture tend to run for citizen. For example in the policy of food sovereignty that oriented to fulfill achievable food needs mean that lower price oriented.
During the two harvests in 2000, peasants gain the price below the fixed price from the government. The price around was 700-900/kg for row rice price. In fact the government fixed price was among 1.020 to 1.065.
The low of row rice price for peasants mean the low of row rice and rise in the market.It is hard to be a peasant. This was reasonable when the harvest period the row rice stock was overload. Moreover there was still the stock from imported rice which was cheaper than local rice.
It is had to be peasants. We were often against to plant sugar cane just because w e wee cannot control the price, so when the harvest came there was only suffer and debt.
In fact, the governments can still taking hand on this matter if they were consequent and consistent with the approved policy. For instant, to stabilize the price in the year of 2000, government was able to buy just said about 10 million row rice for Rp 1.100/kg. It was means that for one cultivating time the government were only need to subsidize about Rp 11 quintillion, a very small amount than Rp 37.9 quintillion that the government has paid for banking recapitulation. Unfortunately the government was not did it.
Now the big question is back to this country, will the authority let the biggest past of this country (peasant) being marginalized? Whereas just by taking care of the peasant welfare, it will be able to grow the development of economic in the next day because they are the biggest part society in this lovely country.
(Outstanding article, food sovereignty)
