Agricultural transformation in Java - legacies of the past challenges for the future

Summary, in English

Indonesia came a long way under Suharto but it became very clear in 1997 that the development process was far from finished. In fact, the crisis showed how vulnerable the Indonesian economy still was. A core issue in development policy in Indonesia was the transformation of the agricultural sector and great efforts were put into this in the early Suharto era. With achievement of self sufficiency on rice in the early 1980s the process stalled and by 1997, the need for agricultural change is as great as ever With this as a starting point, the paper will examine the agricultural transformation process in Java during Suharto. The paper will focus on three core aspects of the transformation process in Java, namely productivity, income and equity in agriculture. With a focus on these three aspects the paper will highlight some of the problems that arose in agriculture in the latter half of the Suharto's reign and examine if these still persists. The paper combines statistical data with policy documents concerning the agricultural sector of Java covering the period 1968 -2008.

• Author: Tobias Axelsson
• Department/s: Department of Economic History
• Publishing year: 2010
• Language: English
• Document type: Conference paper
• Topic: Economic History
• Conference name: European Association for South-East Asian Studies (EUROSEAS), 2010
• Conference date: 2010-08-26 - 2010-08-28
• Conference place: Gothenburg, Sweden
• Status: Unpublished