Unarticulated tensions in the marketization of organic agriculture: the case of pioneer organizations in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Organic agriculture has developed in Indonesia since the 1980s due to the work of various pioneer social movement organizations and as a reaction to the ecological and socio-economic problems arising from the Green Revolution. In the twenty-first century, organic agriculture has undergone standardization and market expansion, following the dominant agroeconomic trajectory. This article discusses the way three pioneer organic organizations in the Yogyakarta region have reacted to these developments. The findings show two divergent reactions, with one organization resistant to market expansion, while the others are more open to it due to their funding needs. However, all three share tensions regarding issues of fairness in market relations. These tensions reveal unarticulated socio-structural issues that tend to be overlooked in the current trend towards marketization in organic agriculture. The move away from its social movement foundations leads to laments that ‘organic has lost its way’. This article argues that the tensions illustrate issues voiced by the conventionalization debate in organic agriculture and that these issues should be articulated to reclaim the transformative potential of organic as a social movement in Indonesia.

KEYWORDS:

• Organic agriculture
• conventionalization
• marketization
• social movement
• Indonesia

Acknowledgements

I thank the informants and the organizations involved in the study for sharing their information and stories. I also thank Stefanus Nindito for assistance in data collection. The study is a complementary part of the IndORGANIC research project with the University of Passau. I thank Martina Padmanabhan, Michael Grimm, Viola Schreer, Nathalie Luck, Dimas Laksmana, Patrick Keilbart, Manuela Fritz and Nurcahyaningtyas Subandi from the IndORGANIC team for their academic discussions. Finally, I thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which I have tried my best to address. All remaining errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation information

Java, Indonesia.

Notes

1 Röling and van de Fliert (1994, 98) report that the army would enforce the use of intensive inputs and high-yield seed varieties, leading to some farmers having their crops cut down. The organic pioneer groups in Yogyakarta state that organic farmers were also subject to this enforcement.

2 Extractive regimes are states that rely on the extraction and trade of various natural resources and commodities for economic accumulation and political legitimacy (Gellert 2010). In Indonesia, the initial resources were oil and minerals but later included forestry and crop commodities.

3 David and Ardiansyah (2016), using data from AOI that include non-certified farmers, report a higher number of around 0.86% of total arable land.

4 This corresponds to the results of the IndORGANIC baseline survey on farmer households in Yogyakarta, which identified that farmers and landholders tend to be male (94%), aged over thirty, and cultivate smallholdings of around 2500 square metres (Grimm and Luck 2018).

5 Outside observers, such as the farmer activists and staff from the Bina Sarana Bakti organization, also confirm this (personal communication, 1st IndORGANIC Workshop, 8–9 December 2017).

6 A substantial amount compared to the average annual income of 16 million rupiah for farmer entrepreneurs (Badan Pusat Statistik 2018).

7 An agribusiness and agro-tourism company specializing in organic vegetables since 2008, which has established itself as a prominent player due to its ability to gain organic certification and to supply conventional supermarket chains.

8 SPTN-HPS and Tani Organik Merapi are trying to revive Pamor in Yogyakarta (Fieldnotes, Pamor meeting at SPTN-HPS Office, 20 July 2018).

9 Some members participate in recent forms of community markets in Yogyakarta which emphasize organic, healthy and local produce, with participants being motivated not only by economic reasons but also by social reasons of building a community based on local healthy food (Widiyanto 2019).

10 For example, a farmer attending an activist event stated that he practises organic methods for food crops but still uses chemical fertilizer for high growth maize, since it fetches a higher price than local varieties as livestock feed (Fieldnotes, Local Seed Discussion, 31 October 2017). The IndORGANIC baseline survey also found that most farmers in their sample still use chemical inputs in addition to organic fertilizer (Grimm and Luck 2018, 26).

11 I thank Patrick Keilbart for helping to provide a clear formulation (see Keilbart and Tamtomo 2020).

Additional information

Funding

The data collection was supported by a Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta Internal Research Grant, 2017.