TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Secretary General of the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA), Dewi Kartika, said that Indonesia’s agrarian and ecological crisis has worsened over the past decade. “This situation is the result of liberal and capitalist economic-political and legal policies,” she said at the 2023 Tenure Conference at the Senayan Building, Jakarta, Monday, October 16, 2023.

Dewi, who is also the chairperson of the conference’s steering committee, mentioned that people's lands, agricultural wealth, and natural resources were considered commodities that could be taken by force for investment purposes and various large-scale businesses.

The KPA recorded that during the administration of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo from 2015 to 2022, there were at least 2,710 agrarian conflicts that affected 5.88 million hectares. “The conflicts erupted due to various businesses and investments, infrastructure development, mining, and various national strategic projects and premium tourism projects,” Dewi said.

Agrarian conflicts and land grabbing have also increased the number of small-scale and landless farmers in the archipelago. “This is because land acquisition for development and investment purposes mostly targets people's productive agricultural lands,” she informed.

According to the 2013 Agricultural Census Data, there were 11.51 million families of small farmers. By 2018, the figure had risen sharply to 15.8 million families, or an increase of 4.29 million families, based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) on the Inter-Census Agricultural Survey.

In 2021, the BPS reported that 72.19 percent of farmers in Indonesia were smallholders, with 91.81 percent being male farmers and 8.19 percent being female farmers.

DEFARA DHANYA PARAMITHA

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