From rags to riches in Sumatra: How peasants shifted from food self-sufficiency to market-oriented tree crops in six years

Abstract

Batumarta in South Sumatra is not a typical transmigration center. Thanks to the financial support of the World Bank and technical assistance from numerous national and international organizations, Batumarta was conceived from the outset as a pilot project, a model for future transmigrations. Although planned by renowned experts, the proposed cropping systems did not win the settlers' approval. To begin with, these migrants disregarded or misused recommended component technology. Then as soon as the rubber trees began producing they completely abandoned food crops. Again, paying no attention to the experts' recommendations, the colonists overtapped their plantations for the purpose of immediate harvest. Considered a failure, Batumarta was not unfamiliar with the extremely stringent regulations applied to Nucleus Estate and Smallholder (NES) projects. In short, this article focuses on the deep misunderstanding of peasant behavior by agronomists and the “economic thought” of cash-cropping smallholders.

Indonesian transmigration was born in 1905 when the Dutch colonial government decided to move 155 families from Kedu in Central Java to a new settlement called Bagelen in the vicinity of Gedong Tataan in Lampung, South Sumatra. By the beginning of the 1990s, with 6.4 million migrants moved from Indonesia's very populated “inner islands” of Java, Madura, and Bali to the archipelago's less populated “outer islands” of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Irian Jaya, transmigration has become the largest agricultural colonization program ever undertaken by a state. Transmigration differs from mere migratory movements owing to the strong involvement of the state at all stages. The state itself selects the migrants, takes charge of them from their starting point to their village of destination, provides them with land, housing, food, tools, and so forth, and manages the settlements for at least five years.

Notes

Called kolonisatie during the Dutch rule, the program was renamed transmigration after independence. See Karl J. Pelzer, Pioneer Settlement in the Asiatic Tropics (New York: American Geographical Society, 1945); Joan Hardjono, Transmigration in Indonesia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Oxford University Press, 1977); World Bank, Indonesia: The Transmigration Program in Perspective (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Country Study, 1988); Patrice Levang, “Tanah sabrang (la terre d'en face). La transmigration en Indonésie: permanence d'une politique agraire contrainte” (Tanah sabrang [The land beyond]. Transmigration in Indonesia: permanence of an agrarian policy) (Ph.D. diss., Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie de Montpellier [ENSAM]), 1995).