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When Rice No Longer Means Prosperity

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· 5 minutes read
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Kompas/Rony Ariyanto Nugroho

Komariah, 50, chase away birds from her crops in a paddy field belonging to Haji Abas in Bodogol, Bandung regency, West Java, Monday (4/9). Komariah is a portrait of the lack of farmer regeneration in her family. When she was young, Komariah and her parents were land-owning farmers, but after she got married, she and her husband became mere farm laborers, and none of her four children want to follow her footsteps in farming. Instead, they work as an air-conditioner technician, a factory worker, a domestic worker and a casual worker. The numerous cases of paddy fields being transformed into factories and housing complexes play a part in the social and cultural changes affecting the farming community, resulting in an end to the regeneration of farmers.

A smallholding farmer will die as a smallholding farmer. This life cycle, of the farmers who sweat under the sun to provide food for the country, should be stopped. If rice farming no longer offers prosperity, who would want to become a farmer?

Possessing farming knowledge, strength, and land were not enough to lure Ahmad Syifa, 29, to work in a paddy field as a rice farmer. The graduate of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) still depends on his job as a teacher at a vocational school in Subang, West Java, for his future.

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