Food Sovereignty: Conditions of the Peasants and the Movement

1
Food Sovereignty Conditions of the Peasants and
the Movement

• Erpan Faryadi
• AGRA Secretary General and APC Vice-chair for
  Internal Affairs
• Paper presented at Conference on Confronting the
  Food Crisis and Climate Change, PAN AP, Penang,
  Malaysia, 27-29 September 2009

2
Outline

• 1. Introduction on APC.
• 2. The Conditions of Peasants and Current Food
  Crisis.
• 3. The Movement for Food Sovereignty and Agrarian
  Reform.

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What is APC?

• The Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) is an Asia-wide
  coalition of at least 20 million farmers,
  landless peasants, fisherfolks, agricultural
  workers, dalit, indigenous peoples, herders,
  pastoralists, women and youth across these
  sectors representing 21 organizations coming from
  8 countries in Asia (India, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
  Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh,
  Mongolia). 
• APC struggles for genuine agrarian reform and
  resist imperialist globalization.
• The APC served as an instrument to unite the
  farmers in Asia and consistently helped in
  strengthening its national peasant organization
  which supports its local struggle especially on
  land and genuine agrarian reform and issues
  surrounding food sovereignty.

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The Conditions of the Peasants and Current Food
Crisis

• There is a shortage of rice in several countries
  in Asia reportedly the worst in the last three
  decades is fast becoming the most urgent issue
  at hand.
• The Philippines needs to import further to
  address tight rice supply, government data shows
  that more Filipino families went hungry because
  they were unable to buy enough food
• 14.6 of Filipinos were not able to meet their
  basic subsistence or food needs, from 13.5 in
  2003. This means that 12.2 million Filipinos were
  starving in 2006, up from 10.8 million in 2003.
• Cambodia has declared a two-month ban on rice
  exports
• India has banned the export of non-basmati rice
  and hiked rice prices to 1,000 per ton
• In Hong Kong, the price of the popular aromatic
  rice from Thailand has increased by 30 and
  people fear the price will continue to rise
• In Indonesia, high prices of food increases food
  insecurity of the people

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• Rice farms in Vietnam have been hit by pest
  attacks seriously affecting output, which is part
  of the reason why it cannot meet rice orders from
  the Philippines. Vietnamese farmers are, however,
  stockpiling whatever they can in anticipation of
  rising demands.
• While so-called experts have blamed rising fuel
  and fertilizer prices, climate change, and lack
  of mechanization or irrigation as the causes of
  the present crises, an Asian farmers has
  different views.
• this would really happen because of rampant
  conversion of rice lands to cash crops,
  governments development projects, and
  plantations the promotion of modern varieties
  and monoculture farming and the phasing out of
  small rice farmers

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• Many countries in Asia have lost domestic food
  self-sufficiency by cutting down on rice farming
  and relying too much on importation.
• The Philippines which used to be a net exporter
  in the 1980s has become the highest net importer
  of rice in the world (since its WTO membership in
  1994), a cruelly ironic situation in todays
  crises.
• Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia have
  devoted 4 million hectares and 5.3 million
  hectares respectively to growing oil palm, and
  this is expected to quadruple in coming years.
• The main cause of this crisis is the backward and
  feudal state of agriculture in the Asian
  countries and is worsened by neo-liberal policies
  of the government and trade liberalization that
  has drastically cut rice lands through land-use
  conversions and crop conversions.
• APC strongly believes that implementation of
  genuine agrarian reform is the ultimate solution
  on the food crisis. Government should also
  control food prices, stop importation, give full
  support to rice productivity program and withdraw
  its membership to WTO.

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• In 2008, Indonesia had overtaken Malaysia with
  46 production and 47 share in the world market.
• Over the next 20 years, Indonesia plans to
  increase palm oil production 43-fold, with the
  area under cultivation expanding from 6.4 million
  hectares in 2006 to 26 million hectares in 2025.
• Some 12 million more hectares have already
  deforested, originally for palm oil plantations,
  but have not been planted. Experts believed that
  some of companies are primarily interested not in
  agrofuels but in quick profit from timber sales.
• Rising palm oil prices are accelerating expansion
  in mainland Malaysia, West Papua and Sulawesi in
  Indonesia.
• Cargill, for example, is increasing it investment
  in palm oil plantation and mills in Papua New
  Guinea and the PNG government is drawing up
  strategy for turning the country into a major
  agrofuel producer. However, Indonesias expansion
  plans are by far the most ambitious in South-East
  Asia.

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• For the 32 years of New Order rule (1966-1998),
  the forestry sector played an important role in
  the Indonesian economy.
• It was developed solely to reap its economic
  values, particularly through exports and for the
  repayment of international debts.
• The FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of
  UN) have stated that the rate of deforestation in
  Indonesia for the period 2000-2005 is the fastest
  in the world. Each year, around 1.871 million
  hectares of forests are lost, or the equivalent
  of 300 football fields. Earlier data from FAO
  notes that between 1976 and 1980, at least
  550,000 hectares of Indonesian forest vanished
  annually.
• This amount has steadly increased along with the
  desire for exploiting forest resources by a
  Forest Consession Rights (HPH or Hak Pengusahaan
  Hutan), especially in Kalimantan, Sumatra and
  West Papua.

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• Sumatra and Kalimantan are the regions which have
  experienced the greatest forest degradation, as
  being the largest timber producers and fast
  development of plantation sector over the last 20
  years.
• There is speculation that HPH holders burnt
  forests for their own interests in clearing new
  lands or for their conversion to large-scale
  plantation use, such as palm oil.
• In April 1997, the Indonesian environment
  suffered a tragedy with forest fires in
  Kalimantan and Sumatra. An estimated 55 million
  hectares of forests were lost, at a price of IDR
  9 trillion (USD 1 billion).
• Other than forest fires which occured in HPH
  concessions, the growth of palm oil plantations
  was a new factor in the fires of 1997-1998.
• In the 1990s, palm oil overtook other crops as
  the main plantation products in Indonesia. In
  January 1995 alone, the East Kalimantan Forestry
  Department prepared 1.4 million hectares of land
  for plantation, with 990,000 hectares of this
  planned for palm oil.

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Comparison of Deforestation rate in different
regions in Indonesia, 1982-1990
11
The Movement for Food Sovereignty and Agrarian
Reform

• During the New Order regime, imperialism has
  promoted sectoral land market oriented policies
  and interrupted the supreme will of Indonesian
  peasantry, expressed partly in the Basic Agrarian
  Law 1960.
• For almost three decades, the Indonesian
  peasantry was forced to follow the green
  revolution programmes which were promoted as the
  antitheses of the land reform programmes.
• The programme is claimed to have succeeded in
  increasing the food productivity in the mid-
  1980s. As an acknowledgement of this success, FAO
  (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
  Nations) gave Suharto FAO Award in 1984.

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• Nevertheless, the success of green revolution
  programmes, did not solve contradictions in the
  countryside. Poverty among the peasantry and the
  people in countryside is increasing every year.
  Having no choice, peasants are forced to sell
  their agricultural products through the bogus
  production cooperatives (e.g. KUDKoperasi Unit
  Desa) in a market dominated by big business.
• The peasants also had to use the chemical
  fertilisers and other means of production that
  destroyed the environment and made the land
  dependent on chemicals.
• The overproduction of food (the New Order regime
  called it Swasembada Pangan Food
  Self-sufficiency) which was proclaimed as the
  main purpose of the green revolution caused the
  price of agricultural commodities to fall.
• Liberalization of the domestic market for
  agricultural commodities brought disaster to the
  peasants. Use of new technologies in the green
  revolution did not help to improve the peasants
  life. Instead, the unemployment rate in the
  countryside is growing high.

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• Other impacts of agrarian crises that already
  happened in Indonesia are hunger and food
  shortage in the countryside. Just in the middle
  of March, 2005, a national paper, Kompas,
  reported that almost 10 districts in the East
  Nusa Tenggara Province (NTT) had been hit by food
  shortage and hunger. The worst sufferers were 32
  villages of District Lembata.
• The same cases but caused by different factors
  also happened in Atjeh and Nias eventually just
  after tsunami attacks. A lot of things happened
  as the effect of agrarian crises in the
  Indonesian countryside today.

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• However, it is important to look directly to the
  causes of the crises. There are at least three
  causes which led to the agrarian crises in
  Indonesia today.
• First, the domination of big landowners in
  concentrating ownership on land and other
  agrarian resources, and the lack of access of the
  poor peasants to get a piece of land to till for
  themselves.
• The dominant ownership of the land consisted of
  the feudal-type and the big plantations-type,
  often land rented out by the government to
  private plantations, either domestic or foreign.
  The first type usually came from the noble
  families of old feudal states who inherit their
  land from their ancestors. The second is the
  institutions that applied the semi-feudal
  relations, especially in relation with land and
  other agrarian resources.
• The big plantations have become the most
  dangerous and reactionary type of landowners
  because they are directly connected with
  imperialism and ever ready to defend its
  interests. They are willing to do anything to
  serve and secure the interests of imperialism,
  including violently repressing the people.
  Examples of big plantations are Perum Perhutani
  and Plantation State Corporation (PTPN).

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• Second, the backwardness of productive forces
  that was caused by the remnants of feudalism and
  domination of imperialist industries all over
  Indonesia. Modern technology has been introduced
  not to benefit the Indonesian peasantry but to
  benefit the big domestic businessmen, the big
  landowners, and imperialism. The biggest effect
  of the forced use of modern technology on the
  agrarian society in Indonesia is the growth of
  unemployment in the countryside. Especially women
  peasants are easily evicted from the land and
  become a large pool of cheap labor for the big
  global capitalists. This is the reason for the
  feminization of Indonesian industry.
• Third, state violence and anti-democratic,
  anti-people, and anti-peasants policies imposed
  by the puppet regimes of US imperialism. Until
  today, the regimes always use the security
  approach to resolve any land dispute and agrarian
  conflict that happened in Indonesia.
• Peasant leaders are arrested or jailed, some even
  murdered. Those cases happened in Bulukumba
  (South of Celebes/Sulawesi), Garut, Subang,
  Pangalengan, Bogor, Sumedang, and Ciamis (West
  Java), Banyumas and Wonosobo (Central Java),
  Manggarai (East Nusa Tenggara), Muko-Muko
  (Bengkulu), Labuhan Batu and Porsea (North of
  Sumatera), Sesepa-Luwu and Dongi-Dongi (Central
  of Celebes), Lombok (West Nusa Tenggara),
  Halmahera (Northern of Mollucas), and Banyuwangi
  (East Java).

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• The state uses such violence to force the people
  accept people many state or corporate
  infrastructure projects funded by multi-finance
  institutions, such as ADB (Asian Development
  Bank) or World Bank, the TNCs or MNCs, and serve
  the imperialist interests in Indonesia. These
  infrastructure projects always violate the
  peoples and peasants rights. The peoples rights
  have been violated by infrastructure projects,
  such as Kedung Ombo dams project, in the Central
  Java province, the Dam Project of Jatigede in
  Sumedang, West Java, or Nipah dams project,
  which became the second biggest infrastructure
  project after the expansion of big-plantation
  areas.
• That is why the cancellation of all
  infrastructure projects and debt problems also
  included in the list of demands of the current
  peasants movement such as AGRA (Alliance of
  Agrarian Reform Movement) and people democratic
  movement in Indonesia. However, the main issues
  of peasant movement are advancing the food
  sovereignty and agrarian reform.

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Conclusion

• The current Indonesian peasant movement demands
  an end to the violent approach of the state as
  well as the release of the arrested peasant
  leaders jailed on the basis of anti-peasant laws.
  
• While demanding the release of all arrested
  peasant leaders, the democratic Indonesian
  peasant movement also rejects the plan of the
  current government to replace the Basic Agrarian
  Law 1960 by another law. The previous draft of
  law revision of BAL 1960 will serve only to
  advance the interests of imperialism and big
  landowners. It totally changes the spirit and
  essence of BAL 1960 which is to carry out the
  agrarian reform.
• Lastly, the agrarian crisis is caused by US
  imperialism. However, in an agrarian country like
  Indonesia, the agrarian crisis has the biggest
  effect among others. It has caused the
  impoverishment and many other forms of
  backwardness of the peasants who comprise the
  majority in Indonesia. This situation has not
  only supported semi-feudal oppression in the vast
  countryside but also impeded the democratic
  movement in Indonesia.
• Therefore, the struggles for food sovereignty and
  agrarian reform in essence is the struggles for
  economic rights of the people and a step forward
  in fighting against semi-feudal oppresssion in
  Indonesia and other semi-feudal and semi-colonial
  countries in Asia.