Is it enough?:  President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo (center), State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno (left) and State Logistics Agency (Bulog) president director Djarot Kusumayakti inspect national rice stocks at Bulog'€™s storage depot in Kelapa Gading, Jakarta, on Friday. (Antara/Widodo S. Jusuf)

A long-term survey conducted by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has found that as more and more young people join in a massive exodus to urban areas, the country could be faced with a dwindling number of farmers that in the long run could affect the country'€™s food security.

A qualitative survey conducted by LIPI found that children of farmers would not likely follow in the footsteps of their parents, and that they thought working in cities offered a more promising life than the one offered by labor-intensive farming.

In the survey'€™s preliminary findings, LIPI discovered that 90 percent of respondents in three of Central Java'€™s regencies '€” Sragen, Klaten and Sukoharjo '€” whose ages ranged from 15 to 29, objected to becoming farmers.

LIPI planned to continue conducting the survey in the country'€™s 34 provinces and expected to wrap up the research in 2017.

'€œThey consider becoming farmers as tiring because it requires more energy than working in a factory, where there is also a more promising income,'€ researcher of LIPI'€™s population research center YB Wibowo said on Friday.

The youths, Wibowo said, were more interested in what urban life offered. They preferred to work at factories in towns near their villages, or even travel to major cities in the area.

'€œThe three regencies are rich with rice fields. What is happening to the youths there is not much different from trends in other regions,'€ he said.

The six-month research by the institute also revealed that almost all of the 150 parents interviewed for the survey, who had teenagers and worked as farmers, did not want their children to become farmers.

'€œThey said that they wanted to set their children free so that they could become whatever they wanted. They only told them to be more educated and not to be like them,'€ Wibowo said.

The parents mostly hoped their children could pursue higher education and work in the cities, or even study and work abroad to become successful individuals.

According to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the number of agricultural laborers in Indonesia had decreased by 1.93 percent on average year by year between 2010 and 2014.

In 2010, Indonesia recorded 38.69 million agricultural laborers. The number declined to 35.54 million in 2014.

Meanwhile, farmers'€™ rights advocacy group the People'€™s Coalition for Food Sovereignty said that there were now fewer incentives for farmers to remain in their occupations. They were increasingly likely to sell their land or construct buildings for businesses.

'€œBeing a farmer is no longer profitable, so how could the parents let their children become
farmers?'€ coalition head Said Abdullah asked.

Such a condition, he went on to say, could be mitigated if the government could introduce better policies to defend farmers'€™ rights.

He said that the government was too focused on the upstream side of the agriculture sector, such as subsidizing fertilizer and seed and providing more modern farming machines to the farmers. Unfortunately, this has yet to affect downstream activities.

'€œThe subsidies are very helpful, but the government is hands-off on the prices in the market. Nowadays, the prices of agricultural products only benefit the traders. The farmers earn very little,'€ Said said.

He went on to say that the government should shift the subsidies to pricing. '€œFarmers in Klaten once told me that they didn'€™t need any subsidy for fertilizer or seed. They wanted the government to subsidize prices,'€ he said.

Said further said that the crisis had threatened not only the stability of the country'€™s agricultural production but also food sovereignty.

'€œImagine in five to 10 years from now, the crisis will be getting worse. It will harm our agricultural production, leading to more and more imports,'€ he said.

The only way for the government to attract youths to farming, Said added, was by ensuring the independence of farmers.

'€œNo matter how great the policy, how sophisticated the technology, and how big the amount of subsidy funds, our agricultural sector will not run well if there are no farmers, and to maintain the farmers, the government must guarantee their ability to stand on their own,'€ Said said. (foy)

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