by Thorsten on Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:20 pm
This all has nothing at all to do with romancing anything or nostalgia , it has also nothing to do with ideology of organic, biological, greener agriculture, maybe indeed (under consideration of export) it could provide an option to a higher price market, but even this is irrelevant on first hand.
Maybe some of you got a wrong impression about my motives in this thread, let me assure you I’m not a greeny, I’m also not dreaming about a Bali 30 years ago, neither I would like to turn back time, much more I see this from an economical aspect!
I don’t want to talk about world population, politics, globalisation or any other, rather abstract matters here in this thread, the topic is Balinese rice and not even in the context, I would like to float into a discussion about industry lobbyism, political failure, whatever, better let’s stay focused on the single, Balinese rice farmer and his personal situation after this so-called Green Revolution.
While estimated 30% of the Balinese population are more or less involved in the tourist industry, 70% of them are not, so to say the majority of the population does not benefit at all from tourism.
Traditionally, agriculture and especially rice farming was and is the main source of income for these people, Bali is an island, but today it’s not the question anymore if Balinese farmers are able to feed the population or not, globalisation also didn’t stop at the shores of Bali, it’s much more the question, is agriculture rentable or not for them.
The price for rice is definite by the market, whoever has seen rice farming in Thailand and will compare it with rice farming in Bali, cultivating rice mostly in steep terraces with paddies, sometimes not even bigger than 100 sqm will understand that the Balinese farmer has no chance at all to compete with it, another factor is the cost of employees and the cost for living in Bali, due to tourism the prices are in general higher than in other parts of Indonesia.
Transport costs in international trade are low, the Balinese farmer is producing an average product, so he will also get an average price for this product, productivity is low due the difficult conditions which make the use of modern technical equipment impossible, human labour is high.
Before the Green Revolution the production costs where almost only definite due the human labour, the farmer was producing the seeds by himself, he had not to buy chemical fertilizers, almost no pesticides – nothing.
With the so-called “Green Revolution” some more other factors were coming together, at the same time the island developed tourism, in the consequence also the local prices for everything else increased, actually the income for the farmer should increase too, to keep the same level of life-standard, at the same time something started which we call now globalisation, so the rice farmers lost the influence on price building, while the costs for production increased now dramatically, in the first years a better yield per hectare due the influence of the modern seeds and intensive use of chemical fertilizers could compensate this a little.
The chemical industry took over the counselling of the farmers, providing more products, newer products, better products, the prices for this products are dictated by them, so the production costs increased and increased, at the other hand the yield per hectare dropped now, the main source for production – the soil died, the ecosystem collapsed and more and more pests were the cause, which are fought now with expensive pesticides, delivered by the same industry.
So the price for the product rice was fixed, the expenses for production increased, the life in general got also more and more expensive.
The tourism industry is advertising Bali all around the world with spectacular images of the rice terraces, a tourist attraction without any doubt and while an unskilled labourer, the people who are preserving and cultivating these terraces gets today 17,500 Rps for a day of hard work, for the Balinese farmer this is even too much, so he gets seasonal workers from Java now, which are doing the job even cheaper in his desperate to reduce some costs.
Rice farming is not providing a solid source of income anymore, more and more Balinese workers are unemployed, the younger people are looking for other jobs.
It’s almost a joke, that the Indonesian government has launched a program now, to get back to sustainable agriculture, it is also a joke, that the SRI program is presented as an innovation, while it is in fact just a return to the time before this Green Revolution, though their statistics about the improvement in different nations of the world are impressing.
In only two generations the knowledge of thousand years was lost, now a training program is teaching Balinese farmers to do the same, they have always done!
When this Balinese farmer Made Cakra is able to double the yield (of course per hectare, per what else, do you think he would even bother to think about the population?) and to increase his profit for 400%, since he simply let the nature do the job, then is this a fundamental change of the economical situation for these farmers!
In agriculture you rely on living elements, it does not work like industrial production, it has nothing to do with eco or not, it is simply fact and these facts have been explored already long time ago.
Balinese rice farmers cannot compete with the world market, but they can try to find a niche for a special product, what will happen with Bali, when all these farmers would give up agriculture, simply due economical pressure, how will the face of Bali change, how will the whole culture change?
Best regards
Thorsten
Memento mori
Memento te hominem esse
