Farmers from West Java, Bali and Sumatra staged a rally in Jakarta on Tuesday to demand the government grant them the ownership of lands that they have worked on for years.

The rally was also part of the celebration of National Farmers Day, which fell on Sept. 24.

Anwar Sastro Ma'€™ruf, the president of the Indonesian People'€™s Movement Confederation (KPRI), the umbrella organization for the Indonesian Farmers Union (PPPI), said limited access to land had contributed to the decline in the number of farmers in the country.

He said the government'€™s decision to give land to business had contributed to the reduction in the number of farmers by 500,000 per year.

'€œThe biggest problem for our farmers today is the land issue. One farmer now has an average of only 0.4 hectares of farmland and the legal status is not clear because the government has yet to recognize their ownership so they are vulnerable to sudden take-overs,'€ Sastro told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday on the sidelines of the rally.

Sastro said that based on Agrarian Law No. 5/1960 and Government Regulation No. 24/1997 on land registration, any individual could get ownership of unregistered land if he or she had worked the land for at least 20 years.

Article 24 of the land registration regulation stipulates that to register their ownership, farmers have to show relevant documents and if they are unavailable, they can register if they produce a witness to verify that the claimant or members of their family had worked the land for at least 20 years. The application will be accepted if nobody objects.

'€œBut in fact, local governments often make it difficult for locals to own land and give it to businesspeople instead for mining, plantation and property although the locals occupied the land first,'€ he said.

Sastro said that violent clashes involving police personnel, soldiers and criminals paid by companies to evict or fight against locals were often the result of land conflicts.

Earlier this month, the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry announced its plan to revise 10 regulations as part of the government policy package to develop industry and boost the country'€™s economic growth.

'€œThe revision will make it easier for investors to take control of land. The government has moved from traditional to industrial food production. Industrial farming always seeks cheap labor and doesn'€™t provide a solution to the current rice shortage,'€ Sastro said.

Currently, Indonesia has only 1.7 million tons of local rice in stock '€” compared to the Philippines, which holds 2.5 million tons with a much smaller population of 90 million people '€” and it has been importing from neighboring countries. In 2014, it imported at least 425,000 tons of rice from Vietnam and Thailand.

Speaking to the protesters at the State Palace, Presidential Chief of Staff Teten Masduki said the government would continue on its path to redistribute more land to farmers.

Teten, however, added that the program would be completed in stages. '€œThe land redistribution program is underway but we need to make sure it proceeds according to its [planned] stages,'€ Teten told the protesters. (rbk)

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