Sulawesi is a part of Indonesia, an island that is larger than Bali. As a part of the developing world it is poor by comparison with countries like Australia. On the other hand, it is quite affluent compared to most of the developing world. In the middle of 1999, just after the departure of Suharto, I was fortunate enough to be invited to give some lectures there to the postgraduates and staff at UNHAS university in the capital Makassar. During the trip I was taken to visit rural areas by three academics from UNHAS, Dr Sikstus Gusli, a soil scientist, Dr Agnes Rampisela, also an agricultural scientist and Professor Husni Tanra, the head of the postgraduate programme. I was interested in the way aspects of the society and economy might be related to agricultural practices. Beyond this I wanted to look at the impact of agriculture on environmental values such as sustainability and biodiversity.
While it was impossible in a brief visit to arrive at certainty, this report can nevertheless confirm the suspicion that market forces play a key role in land degradation. At the same time, Indonesia under the Suharto regime was far from a pure market economy, with massive government intervention in the economy, not to mention corruption. This was not without environmental effect. As well, it seems likely that certain cultural factors also pre-disposed Sulawesi towards some kinds of land degradation. Some parts of this account are more directly related to globalisation – where agricultural commodities are produced for the world market. However, more indirectly, almost every part of Sulawesi agriculture must be understood through reference to the impact of globalisation as a process which ties development to global economic networks.
Traditional Sulawesi Agriculture and its Contemporary Survivals.
Prior to European colonisation, society in Sulawesi could be regarded as feudal in some parts of the country and tribal in other regions. As such agriculture was either for subsistence within the local economy or agricultural products were surrendered as tribute to ruling groups. This social structure favoured rice as a cereal crop that can be readily stored, accumulated and appropriated. As well as this, gardens producing mixed crops of vegetables, fruit, and nuts coexisted with large areas of forest. Control of methods of production was organised locally.
Sustainability and biodiversity were supported by a number of factors. Mixed gardening with tree crops as key elements holds soil, and achieves long term success through companion planting, legume fixing crops and local production of manures. With low population density, large areas of forest were used without being destroyed, ensuring a biodiversity of wild forest species. Rice production may have been an exception to this overall sustainability by causing long term soil erosion; on the other hand, in Indonesia, rice is grown on deep volcanic soils, which take centuries to erode.
Overall, the social structures of a subsistence economy with local control of agriculture favoured sustainability.
- Because there was a direct relationship between continued agricultural success and survival.
- Because land was effectively owned by those who farmed it, to be passed on intact to their heirs.
- Because there was no possibility of increasing wealth by producing more and more agricultural products to be exchanged for cash.
- Because there was a customary expectation of of a given quantity of agricultural products, that could be accomodated within the context of long term sustainability.
- Because there were no technologies that ruling groups could use to increase productivity constantly and extract more surplus.
Today, survivals of traditional agriculture are still important in the Sulawesi economy, with much agriculture being for subsistence, rather than for the market. Local landowning throughout Sulawesi is still high and much of this land is used for local subsistence.
The Example of Tana Toraja
Tana Toraja is a highland area of South Sulawesi, and was traditionally a tribal and animist area. While this might suggest an egalitarian economy there was in fact a clear distinction between wealthy aristocratic elites and the rest of the population. Tana Toraja is currently a Christian area within Indonesia. I was taken there by Dr Sikstus, whose wife comes from Tana Toraja. He provided most of the information used here. In Tana Toraja, a fairly normal holding of rice land is 1 or 2 hectares. While this is sufficient for family subsistence, some wealthy locals may own 5 hectares or more and sell rice on the market. Most people grow enough rice for their own everyday use, but they may end up buying extra supplies to provide for food at festivals. The cash used to make these special purchases frequently comes from donations made by relatives in employment in the market economy. It is quite common for members of an extended family to become educated and go elsewhere in Indonesia to work, sending donations home.
Funerals are very expensive in Tana Toraja because people compete to gain status by holding large funerals. During the weeks prior to the funeral, relatives are entertained and stay in specially constructed temporary homes for the event. The closest relatives provide cigarettes and meals for the mourners. Buffalo and pigs are sacrificed at the ceremony.
In addition to their rice fields, many Tana Toraja families have mixed gardens, producing a variety of fruit, timber and vegetable crops. These polyculture gardens are exemplary examples of sustainable agriculture – local production for local consumption; plant leagues; composting and manures; nitrogen fixing legumes; polyculture and self sustaining biodiversity; animal protein and manure generated on site from the excess production of the garden; tree crops to maintain soil health and prevent erosion.
These survivals of Tana Toraja traditional agriculture imply a mix of social structures. On the one hand, peasants owning rice fields and gardens to produce their subsistence; on the other hand, members of these same families who are working in the market economy. On the one hand, a traditional gift exchange organised around a funeral; on the other hand, a funeral exchange amplified by goods purchased within the market. On the one hand, agriculture organised to produce subsistence for the local owners; on the other hand agricultural products purchased with wages from the market economy. Globalisation impacts on this agriculture indirectly – through market employment in the global economy becoming a source of wealth for traditional ritual; through income from tourism or cash crops for the global market providing a wider economic context for local subsistence agriculture.
A Traditional Tana Toraja Garden
I was taken to several traditional mixed gardens. The slides are from the garden of Pak Sikstus’ aunty. She lived on her land with several daughters and their children. While the men tended the paddies and looked after the cattle, the women looked after the home gardens and the pigs and poultry around the house.
Beans, taro, sweet potato
This area was intensively gardened and maintained. On the left are green beans, and on the right foreground is sweet potato with cassava in the background.
Beans close up
Here is a close up of the beans growing on bamboo stakes.
Bamboo
Two types of bamboo were grown in this garden: one to produce bamboo shoots as vegetables and for craft work; the other for construction timber. The sheds for pigs and for storage for cacao were constructed from bamboo produced on site, as was a large traditional house used in a funeral ceremony. In the foreground of this picture is cassava, and on the right hand side of the bamboo is a small fruit tree.
Aren Palm
This palm tree is an Aren, the sap is used for sugar and making arak, a palm wine.
Pigs
Several pigs were kept and fed on sweet potato and taro – tubers and leaves.
Pig food
These are taro and sweet potato leaves, gathered to feed the pigs.
Cacao
This is a bamboo storage shed with cacao in the foreground. The shed uses traiditonal morticing, with posts sitting on large rocks to avoid water damage. It has a corrugated iron roof. Cacao is one of the most important export crops of Sulawesi, and is often grown in large plantations. Here it is part of the mixed garden.
I was able to develop the following list of the food crops producedby this household. These were all the crops I knew myself or that Pak Sikstus was able to tell me about. There are probably more that we did not list.
Sweet potato, green beans, sugar palm, two varieties of bamboo (one for construction and another for eating, cooking and artworks), jackfruit, coffee, cacao, paku (an edible fern), sugar cane, taro, candelnut, citrus, durian (the fruit and also the shell dried for fuel), kedongdong (a fruit tree), grass for buffalo feed, dolichos lab lab (for leaves and beans), bananas, coconut palm, guava, rice, pepaya (leaves and fruit both eaten), gamal (a tree legume).
They also had several varieties of livestock – buffalo, cows, pigs, poultry and fish (grown in ponds in the rice paddies).
Traditional Agriculture at Malino
Malino is a high hilly area, favoured by the Dutch in the colonial period as a cooling holiday resort and now used the same way by the upper middle class from the city. I was taken there by Ibu Agnes and Professor Tanra, who both have holiday homes in Malino. Pak Augustinus is the gardener for Ibu Agnes. In my discussions with him it became clear that local people are quite aware of the fact that tree legumes can be intercropped with fruit trees to create soil fertility and to protect understorey bushes such as coffee and cacao. Species of Ailanthus, Albizia and Erythrina seemed to me to be trees that were being used this way. The following three slides show local examples of traditional mixed cropping in this area.
Rice with Mangoes
I was interested to see this example of mixed gardening of fruit with rice, since the effect of these large mangoes is to shade the rice and reduce yield. On the left is a large bamboo used for building timber.
Rice, Taro, Jambo, Fish
This was a good example of mixed gardening. It was the house garden of an old man who was well known as a good gardener. The pond is used to grow rice and taro, with a band of guava trees along the edge. Fish are also stocked in the pond and the guavas feed the fish.
Water fern and Kang Kong
Growing in this pond were also some green vegetables, an edible fern as well as kang kong, in the ipomaea family.
Cash Crops for the National Market
In comparison to traditional subsistence agriculture, cash crops grown for the national market are quite likely to be grown in ways that lead to soil degradation or other environmental problems. Socially, one could relate this to a number of factors:
The aim of cash cropping is to maximize cash income at a given time rather than to create a sustainable source of food – generation after generation.
Fluctuating market prices mean that downturns in the market price are experienced as cash shortages and lead to attempts to increase production from the same area of land.
Land used for cash crops is often owned by an entrepreneur rather than by the person who farms it.
The owner is distanced from the environmental effects of pressure to produce more and the farmer has no long term interest in maintaining the land for the owner.
The actual farmers who work cash crops in developing countries often have no other source of support than the meagre income from their crop after the owner and intermediaries have culled much of the profit.
Large areas turned over to a single crop are seen as more efficient in terms of working the land and maximizing cash income.
Manuring, composting and mulching are seen as a waste of labour if a crop can be obtained without them.
Where land is ploughed or dug to produce a crop, soil erosion is more likely if there is a large ploughed area.
Steep slopes are profitable cropping areas for a time after the original vegetation is cleared, even if the long term consequences are problematic.
Some crops commonly grown as cash crops for the national market in Sulawesi are rice, cassava, sweet potato, fruit and vegetables, as well as timber.
Potatoes and Cabbages
The Malino area has been associated with a veritable boom in vegetable production. I was informed about this by Ibu Agnes and her husband Pak Gustri. The boom began 20 years ago after being initiated by a Javanese entrepreneur. The produce is sent in trucks to that capital, Makassar or further afield. Land is owned by wealthy owners who do not work it themselves but rent its use to tenant farmers. Potatoes are the main crop, but other colder climate vegetables such as cabbages are also grown. As my photos show, crops are grown on very steep slopes, causing much soil erosion. Up until recently, soil washed from these fields has been one of the main sources of pollution in rivers, affecting fisheries along the coast. More recently, since the construction of a huge hydro-electric dam a key effect of soil erosion will be to silt up the dam. The dam was designed for a life span of 50 years but this soil erosion means it may only last for 20 years. Another environmental problem caused by this vegetable production is to fill the waterways with toxic pesticides. This is a typical example of the contradictions of the market economy. An international aid project designed to boost the economy through power production is being undermined by another economic initiative.
Cabbages at Malino
Rows of cabbages are planted here on a very steep slope, with the potential for soil erosion being very apparent.
Farmers’ house
This house in the market garden reveals the poverty of these growers for the local urban market. It is likely that this land is not owned by the farmers who work it – they are either squatters or tenants.
Soil erosion at Malino
The soil erosion here is a final outcome of clearing and timber extraction by the Dutch and Japanese colonial governments. However, continued use of this land for grazing or growing vegetables on the steep slopes is aggravating this situation. Re-planting with mixed timber and food trees would be the ideal solution.
Looking at a similar situation in Java, Joan Hardjono explains this kind of market agriculture and associated land degradation in this way. In Java there has been a huge expansion of the amount of steep land used for annual crops . Partly, she traces this to population growth but another reason is the policy of the Indonesian government to achieve self sufficiency in rice. This has driven non-rice crops out of the flatter irrigated areas and onto steep slopes. As well, freshly cleared land is initially very fertile, making it attractive to vegetable growers. In 1957, land previously owned by the Dutch and made use of for estates growing tree crops was nationalised. Squatters occupied the land and used it to grow annuals. Subsequent private owners legitimised by the government have found it more profitable to continue getting cash in hand from annuals than to invest in replanting perennial tree crops.
It seems possible that this is also the history of land used for vegetables in these steep areas of Sulawesi. On the other hand, clearing of primary forest by the Dutch and Japanese may have been followed by a long period of abandonment ultimately followed by these vegetable plantations. At any rate the explanation of the absence of tree crops is undoubtedly the same – good profits from production for the city as against long term expensive investments in tree crops. A classic example of the influence of market forces on agriculture and the environment.
Pepaya (pawpaws)
On my way back to Makassar from Tana Toraja I observed a similar problem of erosion in the context of fruit growing on the edge of the Tana Toraja plateau. Here pepayas were being grown in bare soil on a very steep slope with obvious implications for soil loss. The surrounding mountainous area was completely denuded of its tree cover, an event which took place during the Dutch colonial period. Here the original rainforest diversity has been replaced by grasses with soil erosion the inevitable result.
Looking at these pepaya plots, and considering their proximity to mulched and well planted mixed gardens in Tana Toraja, I was initially convinced that this was a typical effect of market agriculture. While the mixed gardens were owned by traditional owners growing food for their own subsistence, these pepayas were clearly destined for the market and tenant farmers had established as many pepayas as possible in the cheapest possible way, without worrying about the ultimate effects. Later, reading Hardjono’s account of Javanese agriculture, I was not so sure about this. She talks about the erosion caused by neatly kept home gardens in Java. In other words, this tidyness is a cultural tradition of Java. Their gardens are swept so that all leaves are removed and all weedy ground covers are eliminated. The aesthetic is bare soil with isolated productive plants. Having seen home gardens like this in parts of Bali, I suspect that this is a common cultural motif which may get expression in these commercial gardens in parts of Sulawesi. It would be no surprise to find home gardens in Tana Toraja different, as its culture is so different from other parts of Sulawesi in many ways.
Pepayas on slope
This is a very steep slope. largely cleared of all trees. The pepayas are in a small orchard, with the soil completely swept bare of mulch or any ground cover.
Pepayas on bare soil
A similar site to the previous photo, showing a planting of pepaya further up the slope. The possibility of erosion very evident here.
Bare hills
An overview from the edge of the Tanah Toraja plateau
Rice versus cassava
Whether rice is a sustainable crop is debatable. The rice terraces of Ifugao in the Phillipines are known to have existed for thousands of years which would imply that rice is a highly sustainable crop. On the other hand, logic would suggest that the constant flooding and draining of fields, using tractors to plough up the mud, must lead to soil erosion in the long run.
Rice Slope
Rice field and mud
This field was being ploughed by a small tractor. The irrigation creek to the right was running with mud and mud from the field itself was draining into the bottom right corner of the photograph and out into the creek.
In the present context, there are three other factors associated with rice growing that have an environmental impact. The varieties of rice that are grown most and which are encouraged or mandated by the Indonesia government are improved or modern high-yielding varieties, often called IRRI varieties after the institute which first developed them. They were introduced to Indonesia in the mid 60s. They receive such strong government support because it is believed that increased yields are necessary to feed a growing population. On the other hand, to achieve these results such varieties have required the input of large quantities of artificial fertilisers and pesticides, heavily subsidized by the government.
Fertiliser is still subsidized but in the late 80s subsidies on pesticides were abolished. This was partly because massive spraying of pesticides had actually increased th pest problem. Th huge cost of the pesticide subsidies was also an issue, as well as the damaging effects of pesticides on farmers’ health. To control pests without large scale us of pesticides, the government initiated a nation-wide programme of Integrated Pest Management. This is designed to reduce pesticide use by close monitoring of pest populations, only using chemical sprays when absolutely necessary. Field schools for farmers were set up to implement this initiative which has been quite successful and drastically reduced the cost of pesticides to the Indonesian government. Environmentally, in terms of human health and biodiversity, IPM is certainly preferable to the previous use of toxic pesticides. One of the effects of the introduction of IPM has been to allow Sulawesi farmers to continue to farm fish in their rice fields.
Ponds like this for fish were common in rice fields in Sulawesi. As the field is drained at the end of the season, the fish retreat to the deeper pond.
Manual control of rice pests
Tomas demonstrating the use of a hand held trap used to remove pest insects from rice fields at Malino. Local farmers comb the fields at dusk, trapping and killing pests. Likely to be one of the strategies encouraged under Indonesia’s IPM policy.
Another environmental issue with IRRI varieties is that these varieties replace a great diversity of local varieties of rice with a loss of biodiversity. It is argued that as a result the food supplies of the world are very vulnerable to diseases which could target the few IRRI varieties. It is also interesting to note that IRRI varieties are always considered to taste worse than the traditional varieties and that farmers can actually get more per kilo for the traditional varieties, if they are allowed to grow them.
By contrast, sweet potato and cassava are locally grown cereal crops that would seem to be slightly less likely to cause erosion. The fields are ploughed once to plant but are dry at the time and rapidly covered with a growth of vines or shrubs. Most frequently, in Sulawesi, these alternative cereals are a low key cash crop grown in small plots surrounded by trees so that any soil that is eroded is probably caught and held by surrounding vegetation, whereas at least some of the soil washed from rice fields just keeps on going down the slope. According to Pak Sikstus, cassava is grown without any artificial fertiliser or pesticides being required.
Cassava and sweet potato crops
This was a smallish market garden crop of cassava and sweet potato, grown near a Tanah Toraja town. There is also an allotment for beans on the left.
Cassava in close-up
Another small cassava plantation in the outer suburbs of Makassar.
In Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren include rice as one of the cereal crops that would ideally be replaced by tree sources of carbohydrate – nuts, fruit and the like. In the recent Natural Capitalism, Hawken, Lovins and Lovins, also argue that ploughed cereal monocultures cause erosion and look forward to perennial grasses being adapted for cultivation. Mollison and Holmgren also suggest that rice and other cereals are crops that play into the hands of centralised power structures, requiring centralised irrigation planning which leads to political centralisation. Once the surplus is effectively taken out of local hands it provides the ultimate leverage to control subject populations, a basic food resource which can be stored easily and doled out by the ruling class to ensure loyalty. Whether these political qualms are apt is hard to decide in the abstract – research in Bali by Carol Warren suggests that in the feudal period, the organisations which allocated irrigation water were an important aspect of local systems of control.
In any event, there is no doubt of the cultural meaning of rice in Indonesia, as in most of Asia. Rice is the prestige cereal crop, the one that is considered to taste best and the one associated with wealth. Moreover, stores of rice are also used by peasant families as a kind of treasure, a rock bottom hedge against bad times, as pointed out by Ibu Agnes. There is a belief that rice is the most nutritious carbohydrate and that you will still feel hungry if you go for a whole day without eating a rice meal. Both Ibu Agnes and Pak Sikstus stressed the way ordinary people in Sulawesi were "rice minded" and explored the complex politics of rice and agriculture in Indonesia at this moment towards the end of the Suharto regime.
In many areas of Sulawesi, rice is a cash crop that benefits local farmers. Both in Malino and Tana Toraja, I was told that holdings of up to 5 hectares were reasonably common for local people with much of their relative affluence coming from their rice fields. On the other hand, both Ibu Agnes and Pak Sikstus maintained that farmers with smaller holdings were kept poor because of the artificially low price of rice set by the government. During the Suharto regime, farmers were effectively forced to grow rice by the government, and were permitted to get subsidised fertiliser only if they grew IRRI varieties. The intention of this policy was to provide cheap rice for the urban poor, to prevent political unrest. On the other hand, Ibu Agnes pointed out that the effect of this policy was to make fertiliser companies rich while rice farmers stayed poor. Another effect of such a policy would have been the over-use of artificial fertilisers with associated environmental damage in terms of soil quality and eutrophication of streams and rivers. It is a "perverse" subsidy, from an environmentalist perspective. Pak Sikstus argued that as the control exercised by the Suharto regime collapsed, farmers were rapidly switching from rice to other more profitable crops – such as prawns and cacao. In the case of prawn farming, the environmental effects might prove worse than rice growing. In either case, they are switching from a staple food crop grown for the national market to a luxury crop grown for the international market.
Pak Sikstus made a strong case that cassava was actually a much more profitable crop than rice. Cassava produces 9 tonnes of tubers per hectare, even when grown in part shade. It requires no irrigation and no fertilisers to be added to the soil. It produces a nutritional leaf that is used as a vegetable. It can also be used as firewood when dried and cuttings can be sold to plant out. This is in addition to the tuber. The value on the market of the tubers that can be grown on one hectare is 7 million rupiah. By contrast 4 tonnes of rice grain with husks can be grown on a hectare. To achieve this result, the rice has to be irrigated and artificial fertilisers and pesticides supplied. The cost of these inputs is 3 million rupiah per hectare. The market price for four tonnes of rice is 5 million rupiah. So, after the cost of inputs is taken into account the farmer is only getting 2 million rupiah per hectare, in comparison to 7 million for cassava. I found this a puzzling account. In terms of what Pak Sikstus said on other occasions, it would seem that government policy is forcing farmers to continue to grow rice, even though it is a much less profitable crop than cassava. Here again what is implied is a policy of government intervention in the economy which actually causes environmental problems. However, from the point of view of government, the rice supply and its low cost have been essential in maintaining civil order.
Rice policy and economic interests
In terms of an analysis of the relationship between society, the economy and the environment, Indonesia’s rice policy is a complex issue.
- On the one hand environmental damage is to a great extent the result of government interventions which mandate a certain kind of agriculture and subsidize it in ways that damage the environment. So the damage is not the result of the free play of capitalist market forces.
- Yet we could also argue that this government intervention is designed to save the market economy as a whole. The supply of cheap rice staves off social unrest. It allows the market economy to operate in a stable political environment. As a result, the more profitable parts of the Indonesian economy can continue to supply wealth to the global capitalist class, the Indonesian elite and consumers in rich countries.
- As well, alternative more profitable forms of agriculture (prawns, cacao) are in many cases just as likely to damage the environment – as well as being oriented to the needs of rich overseas consumers. So the free play of market forces would not necessarily improve things, either environmentally or in terms of social justice.
Cash crops for the International Market
Cash crops for the international market are sometimes grown on small farms owned by locals. In other cases there is a joint venture company between a bank, a private company or the government and local farmers. These are sometimes partly owned by an international food company. From what I was told, this expansion of farming to provide for the international market takes place on marginal farming land, regrowth forest, or original primary forest. Sometimes the land is owned by locals who are brought into the enterprise or sell their land. More often than not, the government has claimed ownership of land that has been traditionally used by some local group, The government then sells it, or more usually leases it , to the company.
Such plantations have specific environmental problems according to what is grown but most generally the fact of a large monoculture is a diminution of biodiversity, especially if it is on previously forested land. Such monocultures are also typically sustained by polluting chemicals and fertilisers but this is not necessarily the case. Clearing the land and planting it out can cause erosion. Some idea of the extent of this can be gained from figures for the Saddang watershed in South Sulawesi. The Saddang river flows through the highlands of Tana Toraja and down to west, the location of the main region for irrigated rice growing in Sulawesi. In Tana Toraja itself are located the largest areas of coffee and cacao production in the province. While these are perennials, they are often grown on very steep slopes cleared of primary or regrowth forest. Between 1968 and 1984 the erosion rate was as high as 660 tons of soil per hectare per year (Hardjono).
From the point of view of social justice, the profits are largely being taken out of the country and local people are effectively deprived of traditional land rights. These have already been pre-empted by the central government’s supposed ownership of anything that is not actually a garden plot or rice paddy. On the other hand, particular types of plantation may get local support or arrange profitable local involvement. A disadvantage of concentration on these crops is that there is some danger of dependence on a volatile global market – at the expense of local self sufficiency in food production.
There is no doubt that in Sulawesi, these international crops are an important source of economic stability and relative affluence, despite the disadvantages mentioned above. On my first day in Sulawesi, the Dean of the Arts Faculty at Hasanuddin University, Professor Mustafah, explained to me that cacao and fish roe were central crops within the Sulawesi economy and had saved Sulawesi from the economic crisis of 1997. During this crisis (usually referred to as Krismon or krisis moneter) the economy of most parts of Indonesia had crashed. Java was the worst affected. This was because Javanese industry and agriculture relied on inputs bought from overseas – for manufacturing but also in rice growing. As the value of the Indonesian rupiah plummeted these became too expensive to purchase. Hardjono mentions the fact that Javanese rice was plagued by diseases as pesticides became too expensive for farmers. Sulawesi was relatively protected from this disaster. Their export crops – fish roe, cacao, coffee, palm oil, cloves, citrus, tea and cassava – were all produced without expensive inputs from overseas. The incomes of Sulawesi farmers actually increased in real terms as the cash in international money that they received was worth more and more in Indonesian rupiahs.
The Price of Cacao
Pak Sikstus spoke to me about the importance of cacao, the source of chocolate. It is widely grown in the Tana Toraja highlands. During Krismon the price in Sulawesi went from 2,000 rupiahs per kilo to 16,000 rupiahs per kilo while the value of the rupiah itself went from 4,000 rupiahs to the US dollar to 16,000. In other words, the effective price of cacao in US dollars doubled. Farmers of cacao were so well off that they were buying all the cars available for sale in Makassar. As they were listening on the news to talk about the monetary crisis it was hard for them to understand what people were worried about. Since then the price of cacao has fallen to 9,000 rupiahs per kilo and is now down to 6,000 rupiahs so it has actually dropped in value relative to the US dollar by now.
Pak Sisktus described the environmental problems of cacao production. Cacao is often planted on very steep slopes – even up to 70 degrees – and the result is soil erosion, since the original forest cover is cleared to plant cacao. Pak Sikstus explained this in terms of the understandable desire of very poor farmers to increase their incomes by growing this crop. On the other hand, there are also large plantations of cacao that are not owned by poor farmers.
Storage shed with cacao
The mixed garden at Tanah Toraja owned by relatives of Pak Sikstus contained a number of cacao plants. This one is growing in front of a bamboo storage shed, created with traditional carpentry techniques from bamboo grown on the site. In the background is the pig pen.
Coffee
Coffee from Tana Toraja is a well known international export crop. As Hardjono points out, coffee may be a perennial but it is shallow rooted, and being often planted on steep slopes, it commonly causes soil erosion. Professor Mustafah is an professor of English language. He spoke to me about a consultancy he carried out which looked at the cultural issues involved in establishing a very large coffee plantation in Tana Toraja. According to him, the local growers welcomed the plantation because they could sell beans from their small plantation directly to the big company, rather than having to carry it to the market in Makale or Rantepao. He said that almost all the big plantations were owned by people from the city. In this case, the plantation was established by a joint venture company that was partly Japanese and partly Indonesian owned. They rented the land from the government through a twenty year lease. It was previously forested land and had never been used for agriculture before.
This is a clear example of the way in which international capital is able to effectively buy land in developing countries and use its monetary power to overcome any possible resistance from governments or the traditional owners. While there will be some benefits for local employees and farmers in this project, most profits will go to local elites and the company itself. As a whole the process makes use of cheap labour and land in a developing country to provide coffee for rich consumers in the first world. Even if no erosion is caused by this project, the clearing of primary forest is a diminution of biodiversity and adds to the many pressures on original forests in Sulawesi.
Coffee growing with bananas and she-oaks
In this instance, coffee (on the right of the picture) is being grown sustainably as part of a mixed perennial garden – along with bananas, and cacao and an overstory of casuarinas ( she – oaks). This is the slope adjacent to the mixed garden of Pak Sikstus’ aunt.
Oil Palms
Pak Sikstus spoke to me at some length about oil palms and was enthusiastic about the expansion of this industry. Because of the poor funding of Indonesian universities, Pak Sikstus does not have enough money to pay for his laboratory equipment or the books he needs as a soil scientist. It is his consultancy with an oil palm company that enables him to purchase these essentials of his work as an academic. His role as a consultant was to prepare a soil report that would secure investment in the project. He believed that the increased market for this product was the result of the development of a technique which enabled palm oil to be changed from a saturated oil to an unsaturated one. This meant that it was fast overtaking soy bean oil as the key oil crop.
Describing a situation which he took to be typical, Pak Sikstus reported that local farmers who were the traditional owners of the land would enter into a joint venture with the company. As I understood him, the company does not actually own the land, but instead shares the business of oil production, with the farmers – usually 80% of the business is owned by the company and 20% by the farmers. The average holding of the farmer is two hectares. Pak Sikstus claimed that on such a holding the farmer could make AUS$4000 in a year from selling the oil palm fruits, after all taxes and company profits had been taken out. This is approximately the same as an academic salary in Sulawesi. Pak Sikstus claimed that local farmers were very keen to join such a scheme. The apparent riches that appear here at the local level have to be balanced against the fact that the expansion of oil palm in Indonesia is being driven by low costs in labour and land. As Aditjondro points out, Indonesia is currently the cheapest producer of palm oil in the world.
Environmentally, the main problem with oil palm is that it is being grown on land that is either regrowth or primary forest. Pak Sikstus confirmed this for Sulawesi, saying that oil palms were also grown on marginal agricultural land.
As a perennial species, oil palms do not imply the same problems of soil erosion as annuals. On the other hand, clearing regrowth or primary forest to grow oil palms will cause initial erosion. In Sumatra and Kalimantan, clearing of large tracts of land for oil palm has been often achieved by setting fire to the forest. The result has been a massive problem of smoke haze that has affected Malaysia and Singapore as well as Indonesia. According to Aditjondro, the Suharto business oligarchy is a leading player in the oil palm industry and has the political clout to prevent any effective control of these fires. In Sulawesi, the large scale use of fire to clear land for oil palms is not prevalent. Instead, it seems more likely that locals willingly clear the forest, selling the timber for building and for kilns to fire house bricks.
One problem in growing oil palms in Sulawesi is that there is not a long wet season. So oil palms must be grown with the assistance of irrigation, a technology with attendant environmental problems of salinisation and increasing demands on limited water supplies. Soil infertility is another problem. At the site that Pak Sikstus was working on at the time of my visit, he was proposing that a crop of Crotolaria (a legume) would be planted along with the palms to introduce nitrogen to the soil. Eventually, this cover crop would be shaded out by the mature palms. Cut grass is also used as a mulch. It is interesting that these techniques which one associates with agricultural reform are also used in conventional commercial agriculture when they make economic sense. Supplementing these organic techniques is some use of artificial fertiliser. It is placed in the planting hole for each palm, with a follow up application later. When I asked Pak Sikstus why manure was not being used for this job he said that at rP5000 per bag it was much too expensive. Nevertheless, use of artificial fertiliser and pesticides is quite minimal for this crop in comparison to many commercially attractive alternatives.
Like cacao, oil palm is a developing country crop that is very vulnerable to fluctuations on the world market. The most likely scenario is that what has already happened with cacao will happen here. The real value of the crop will descend as more and more developing countries plant it as a commercially attractive option. The height of the world price for oil palm was attained in the 1970s, a period when Indonesia greatly expanded its acreage of this crop. However by the end of 1990, world prices were only a third of what they were six years before this (Hardjono).
Ultimately, this is a typical scenario of the structures of globalisation and their impact on the economies of developing countries. Competition between developing countries for export markets in the rich countries means that prices for exports of agricultural products decline relative to living standards. The net transfer of wealth in the form of hours of labour from the poor countries to the rich countries continues. While on the ground it may seem that a new crop or market niche provides wonderful opportunities for getting rich, the reality is that people in developing countries are spending most of their working hours producing goods for the rich countries – what they are getting in return has cost much less labour time to produce.
A Tea Plantation
While I was not able to get a look at any large plantation of cacao, coffee or oil palms, I did visit a tea plantation in the Malino area. It is owned by a Japanese company which has entered into a joint venture arrangement with the Indonesian government. The Japanese have a 30 year lease from the government for the use of this land. It is hard to know at this stage what was grown last on the land here before the plantation. Surrounding it are many rice fields of local farmers. However it could also be land that had been cleared of forest by the Dutch and had remained unused since then. Tea is another perennial crop and does not require major inputs of agricultural chemicals. Environmentally, the main problem is that it is a monoculture which has replaced an original diversity of forest cover. In terms of social justice, it is identical to other examples of plantation agriculture – most of the wealth generated by the plantation is being siphoned off by overseas investors or the Indonesian governing elite.
Tea Plantation Building
This building is the factory for processing tea that services the Japanese owned tea plantation in the Malino district.
Tea Plantation Vista
The extent of this monoculture is evident.
Conclusions
My trip revealed some fascinating examples of traditional home garden agriculture that had been developed in complete accord with the principles of sustainable agriculture. Many aspects of this agriculture are text book examples of permaculture as described by Mollison and Holmgren – the importance of perennial crops, stacking of tall and low plants, plant leagues, mulching and ground covers, multi use sites and companion planting, fertilising with annual or perennial legumes, animals and fish raised on the excess produce of local food gardens, local production for local subsistence, diversity and stability of gardening ecosystems. On the other hand, as I have tried to show, these forms of agriculture are essentially survivals at the present time. Their continued presence in certain places has to be understood as being the result of a complex play of social forces which relate this traditional agriculture to aspects of the co-existing market economy; traditional land tenure, cash income from relatives outside the traditional economy, poverty and unemployment driving non-monetary forms of subsistence, the survival of types of traditional agricultural knowledge which favour sustainability.
Alongside this traditional subsistence agriculture were a range of market agricultures. Many of these were local enterprises, with land still owned by traditional owners or used by tenant farmers on very small acreages. In such cases, the people working the farms were often extremely poor. Annual crops and perennials were alike in being farmed in ways that were usually unsustainable with soil erosion being the most common problem. It was sometimes hard to know whether environmental problems were the result of decisions being made that were market driven or whether they were the result of cultural understandings about appropriate gardening practice. For example it was undoubtedly market forces which led people to use cheap sloping sites with good soils for vegetables and fruit trees – but it was not clear why the land under the tree crops had been cleared of all vegetation. It seems unlikely that the environmental problems of this kind of agriculture can be readily solved by government regulations; since what is driving it is the presence of good markets in the cities for agricultural produce combined with unemployment and poverty in the rural areas. For the situations where tenant farming is the norm, unequal land ownership is another problem.
The sense in which this agricultural situation is tied into globalisation is not immediately clear. One issue is that the urban middle class are a group whose income is derived from jobs within the globalised international economy. It is their growing income which is providing the market for agricultural products trucked from country areas. Another issue is the fact that poverty is partly the result of land being taken over by joint enterprises between government and international companies, driving many poor Indonesians to become tenant farmers. The decision of the government to become self sufficient in rice and to provide cheap rice can be related to the need to stabilize the political situation. In turn this stability allows global capital to develop profitable enterprises within Indonesia. Government decisions about rice have had various environmental consequences, both in terms of the way rice is grown and in terms of driving other kinds of agriculture into more environmentally marginal areas.
As has been made clear, it is poverty which is driving at least some of these agricultural decisions. In turn this poverty is related to a situation in which much labour in Indonesia is devoted to creating exports. Instead of this labour developing wealth for other Indonesians it is effectively siphoned off. Goods produced in Indonesia are exchanged for goods produced with much less labour in wealthy countries. Further to this, the structure of unequal ownership means that a large part of the wealth earned in this exchange is appropriated by the owners of global companies and the Indonesian elite itself.
The third form of agriculture which is prevalent in Sulawesi is production for the international market. Very often the crops here are perennials and it is more likely that long term sustainability is possible with these crops. However in the context of Sulawesi and other parts of Indonesia there are several factors that work against a benign environmental outcome.
- these sites are usually monocultural, it being regarded as more efficient in labour and management terms to concentrate on a single crop. There is no biodiversity and the crops is very vulnerable to pest infestation which may have to be treated with toxic chemicals dangerous to farmers and any remaining wildlife.
- the expansion of this agriculture as part of globalisation means that more and more areas are being cleared of original biodiverse forests, whether primary or regrowth.
- market forces are impelling the expansion of this agriculture into unsuitably steep slopes where erosion is the result of initial clearing and often continues even if the species are perennial.
- agricultural practices are often to sweep and tidy underneath these perennial species, increasing the likelihood of erosion and further reducing biodiversity.
- however benign the agricultural practices are at the point of production, these crops are destined to be transported around the world with the use of fossil fuels, thereby contributing to the greenhouse effect.
This is something of a grim picture and I am very conscious of the fact that for local people, there is not a great deal of choice about whether to participate in this globalising agriculture or not. As I have mentioned, one of the key benefits of export agriculture for Sulawesi has been that it provides a somewhat solid foundation for the economy in comparison to enterprises that require major inputs from other countries to function. While all individual export crops are vulnerable to fluctuations on the world market, the safest economic strategy is to have a spread of crops which is exactly the situation in Sulawesi. Short of a major change in social structure, it would seem that there are only a few strategies that are likely to help in dealing with the environmental problems of this situation.
- Promoting agricultural strategies that are sustainable and also economically viable. For annual crops, this must be by rotating crops, slashing and mulching, intercropping with perennial species and so on. For perennials it must be through combining a small number of profitable crops in a way that stacks species together to maintain soil and resist pests and diseases. This strategy, as Pretty points out, can only work if NGOs, government and agricultural extension workers operate by working with local people to help solve problems that are perceived to be problems at the local level.
- Intervention through the rich countries to increase aid to NGOs that work through local participation. As I have said, current inequalities in trade favour consumers and producers in the rich countries. This can be counterbalanced by voluntary donations of cash to effective aid organisations.
- Strategies that link consumers in the rich countries to projects of sustainable agriculture in developing countries. In other words, fair trade products and joint participation of local groups and consumer organisations from the rich countries in common agricultural projects.
References
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