Tropentag 2023, September 20 - 22, Berlin, Germany "Competing pathways for equitable food systems transformation: trade-offs and synergies."

Competition on land between food crop and other land use in Indonesia

Universitas Negeri Medan, Geography Education, Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has since long aimed for self-sufficiency in several essential food commodity such as rice, sugar, and soy bean. In the course of its implementation, more focus has turned to rice than to other crop. However, after achieving self-sufficiency in 1984, the country has never been able to achieve it again. With increasing population, competition on land is tightening. In urban and urban fringe area, rice fields are converted into settlement or business complex, while in rural area, the farmers turned to other drop considered more profitable, such as oil palm. This study aims to discuss the competition on land faced by food crop in Indonesia. The case study is done in three urban fringe areas for the conversion of rice field to urban uses and in four rural areas for the conversion of rice field to cash crop. Results show that in the three urban fringe areas, the pressure of urban area has caused the conversion of rice field to settlement and other built-up area. In the four rural area, the perception of low profitability of rice and the perception of high profitability of oil palm has driven the conversion of rice fields into oil palm estate. There are many other things affected the conversion of rice field to other uses, such as the high workload of rice farming, inefficient subsidies, ineffective agricultural advisor system, and the position of rice farmers as merely rice growers in the rice production system and not rice businessmen. This will be further discussed in the presentation.

Keywords: Cash crop, competition on land, food crop, rice field, urban uses

Contact Address: Nina Novira, Universitas Negeri Medan, Geography Education, Jl. willem iskandar pasar V, 20221 Medan, Indonesia, e-mail: ninanoviraunimed.ac.id