On December 30, 2024, the Government decided to stop food imports, especially rice, sugar, corn and salt. This policy directly follows President Prabowo Subianto’s commitment to pursue food (and energy) self-sufficiency in the next 4-5 years.
In response to this policy, the Government overhauled the ranks of Bulog’s leadership. Frankly, the Government installed a military Major
General Novi Helmy Prasetya, as President Director of Bulog as of February 7, 2025. Erick Tohir, the Minister of SOEs, inaugurated military personnel to pursue the target of maximum absorption of grain and rice of 3 million tons in February-April 2025.
Militaristic policies in the food distribution subsector have emphasized the deepening involvement of the military in national food policies and systems. Previously, the Government had taken a policy to deepen the extension of paddy fields through the rice field printing program (Program
Food Security) in Papua which continues the National Food Barn policy and the establishment of a Food Brigade by the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the TNI to increase food production at the site level throughout Indonesia.
If we refer to the definition of food sovereignty in Article 1 point 2 of Law No. 18 of 2012 concerning Food, it is clear that the position of state rights is very dominating over the nation’s rights in determining food policy and people’s food system. The entry of the military to fulfill the ambition of pursuing the target confirms how the state interferes too much in the people’s food and agricultural system: the state brings procedures and procedures, the people seem to be only spectators and objects.
The question is, is the Government so distrustful of the ability of ‘energy in the people’ in fulfilling food sovereignty independently? Indigenous Peoples, as the largest part of the ‘inner energy’ of the Indonesian people, should have great potential to encourage the pace of food sovereignty.
The Indigenous Peoples Bill is a must. However, what must be fulfilled by Indigenous Peoples if the Indigenous Peoples Bill is properly passed?
The Reality of Food Policy
The ambition of policymakers towards food ambition indicates two things. First, the government’s optimism does not lie in the real reality of the condition of food agriculture in Indonesia. Since 2018, Indonesia has faced a decline in rice production from 81 million tons (2017) to 53.9 million tons (2023). The decline in rice production is accompanied by the narrowing of agricultural land area in the last 5 years (2018-2023) causing 1.23 million tons of rice to be lost every year.
The decline in the area of agricultural land is accompanied by a decrease in the number of food farmers which also results in a decrease in the contribution of food agriculture to the socio-economic development of the people. The increasingly unattractive farming work causes a decrease in the number of farmers because the agricultural sector is no longer suitable as a source of livelihood, especially in the food agriculture sector. As a result, lands that are forced (and forced) abandoned to convert agricultural land into plantation or mining industries (extractive economy) which massively enter productive agricultural lands in rural areas.
The government’s ambition to increase rice production emphasizes national food uniformity and closes other possibilities for food production other than diverse rice. Local food production such as cassava, sweet potatoes, sorghum, jali, jewawut and various other foods is still just a decorative policy that has not yet become mainstream in national food policy. Ironically, the diversity of food and the economic potential of the people are shrinking due to the expansion of agricultural land with a corporate pattern as occurred in the areas of the National Food Estate Project such as Papua, Central Kalimantan and North Sumatra.
Second, the government blatantly no longer puts full trust in farmers as the main backbone of national food production. The Job Creation Law has placed food imports on par with domestic food production. Job Creation is a reflection of the Corporate Food Regime (McMichael, 2013, 2020) which has become so pervasive in national food policy. The national food policy paradigm still relies on national food procurement from various sources as long as national food availability is met. As a result, domestic farmers have to deal directly with rice imports and the global food market which completely harms and weakens their position.
The paradigm of the corporate food regime relies heavily on outside knowledge that does not disturb the knowledge of farmers on the site by imposing various ‘modern’ agricultural modes that are not from farmers through agricultural mechanization, genetically engineered seeds, and chemical- and capital-intensive agricultural inputs. Because of its capitalistic nature and distrust of the power of farmers on the site, the food policy paradigm relies on the pattern of farmer entrepreneurship that is carried out in a capital-intensive, large-scale land tenure and scientific knowledge-based corporate logic that seizes the land of Indigenous Peoples and threatens their knowledge.
The national food policy that is thick corporatically is emphasized by extra-economic security through military involvement so that policy practices run smoothly and without interruption. The TNI’s intervention in securing the rice field printing program in Papua, the establishment of a food brigade and the installation of high-ranking officers as core officials in Bulog are clear signs of these security measures. The policy clearly caused social tension on the site where farmers were threatened with being thrown from their sources of livelihood under an all-force command pattern.
In the long term, the command policy pattern makes farmers infected with a syndrome of dependence on the orders of superiors that destroys the Peasants’ ability to initiative and independent innovation. This syndrome is further exacerbated by the Peasants’ dependence on external sources of agricultural production where unstable market prices make the Peasants’ position even more shaky. This condition causes the vulnerability of Peasants who are directly confronted by the country and the global market.
The Way Home to Food Sovereignty
With the above conditions of food agriculture, it is clear that the road to food sovereignty in the hands of farmers is still far from being grilled.
As mentioned earlier, the nation’s rights seem to be still absent in the national food policy which is full of dominance of the state’s right to rely on the pattern of a corporate food regime escorted by the military. As a result, Indigenous Peoples are the main victims of the dominance of these policies. Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur
The UN Right to Food (2017, in FIAN Indonesia 2020) once reminded that Indigenous Peoples are the most impacted victims of food rights violations in Indonesia.
The presence of the Indigenous Peoples Law opens the gate to return to the longed for village called food sovereignty. The Indigenous Peoples Law ensures state recognition of Indigenous Peoples, especially as the main support for national food sovereignty. Basically, a nation’s food sovereignty relies on the power of the power of its people, its Peasants (Sajogyo 1991). Therefore, national food sovereignty should stand on the agricultural system of the farmer agricultural system, namely the agricultural system in the hands of the autonomy of the peasants (Van Der Ploeg 2013, 2019). In contrast to the condition of farmers today under the corporate food regime, the long-term impact of the Green Revolution since the late 1960s has completely eroded the farmers’ agricultural system.
Indigenous Peoples are the most important pillar in the farmer’s agricultural system where they rely on the autonomy of their agricultural system both in terms of production-reproduction and consumption. Therefore, the Indigenous Peoples Bill is important as a marker and regulator of the ‘way home’ back to the farmer agricultural system that has been inherited by the ancestors at once.
The Indigenous Peoples Bill must ensure the food rights of Indigenous Peoples. The right to food of the community is determined directly in their hands through a food system that has been practiced for generations. This food system is a crystallization of human practices that are in harmony with nature to form a comprehensive living space and are interdependent with each other. Therefore, this food system is based on comprehensive agrarian control and a broad customary knowledge system based on the reckoning of human relations to their living space and the relationship between humans and living things related to their living space such as customary institutions, customary institutions related to rituals, farming rules and norms, knowledge of agricultural ecology in maintaining soil fertility and increasing crop yields, knowledge of local food varieties, collectivity of Indigenous Peoples in ancestral heritage agriculture and local food storage and processing techniques.
Indigenous agricultural practices have been known as agricultural practices that maintain ecological sustainability in a sustainable manner for centuries. Indigenous agricultural practices rely on the sustainability of increasing crop yields in harmony with the adjustment of the ecological conditions of their living spaces. This centuries-old practice has resulted in a system of customary institutions and institutions that are the crystallization of the long-term learning outcomes of human relations with nature, and the relationship between humans and living things in their living spaces. This practice is what gave birth to the community’s food system
Customs, which are an important foundation for the wealth of the agroecological agricultural system today. The entry (violence) of the state due to the lack of guarantees of respect and recognition for the food system of Indigenous Peoples has resulted in a deep-rooted and chronic social and ecological crisis.
The food system of Indigenous Peoples has long been attacked by the Green Revolution from the 1960s to the 1970s. In research by AMAN and the Sajogyo Institute in 6 (six) pilot Indigenous Communities (forthcoming), the food system of Indigenous Peoples has been eroded due to forced transitions by the state in the introduction of superior seeds, chemical fertilizers, pest and weed poisons, and mechanization of agricultural tools. The violence of the state in terms of ancestral knowledge and practices has resulted in significant and comprehensive social changes that have resulted in the individualization of Indigenous Peoples, the formation of increasingly sharp social classes that lead to the massive socio-ecological destruction of agriculture due to the encroachment of Indigenous Peoples on their living space. The three Indigenous Communities with wet rice farming ecosystems that previously relied on local rice seeds have undergone the most significant shifts, sooner or later.
The most basic thing is that the Indigenous Peoples Bill must guarantee the right to control the agrarian resources of Indigenous Peoples. The condition for food sovereignty is agrarian sovereignty where the people (especially Indigenous Peoples) are guaranteed control over the land, especially the peasants who cultivate their land. The Basic Agrarian Law in general has laid the basis for the regulation of lands owned by Indigenous Peoples with Customary Rights. However, the regulation of Customary Rights still follows a fragmentary and partial logic with the dominance of rules from the Ministry of Forestry (through the Forestry Law Regime). As a result, the State is the main actor in the cause of agrarian conflict vis a vis Indigenous Peoples. The issue of Indigenous Peoples in Forest Areas has been widely studied in the Komnas HAM Inquiry (2017).
The opaque regulation of customary territories has led to endless agrarian conflicts. AMAN (2024) noted that 2.88 million hectares of customary territories have experienced agrarian conflicts. The opacity of customary territory recognition laws is still overshadowed by the logic of recognition based on the mindset of residual rights. Van Vollenhoven, for more than 100 years, has reminded this problem. This logic places customary territories as mere residual territory after the land has been distributed in terms of private property, business use rights, and building use rights (as well as other rights). Through the Community Bill, this legal logic must be reversed: Indigenous Peoples first, other rights later. In this way, the control of agrarian resources by Indigenous Peoples is strengthened and emphasized.
The problem of controlling agrarian resources is the main factor in the erosion of the indigenous peoples’ food system. All research locations in 6 Indigenous Communities experienced problems with agrarian control. The most common problems encountered were agrarian congestion in Forest Areas and congestion problems related to concession permits. Three Indigenous Communities that incidentally have a rotational agricultural ecosystem experienced the most severe impact of agrarian congestion due to mining concession permits, forest operations and oil palm plantations. One of the most severely affected Indigenous Communities is the Tempayung Indigenous Community where the practice of rotational fields only remains their knowledge memory and their rice barns that should not be touched with the space of the rotational field have been cleared by oil palm companies.
The deprivation of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and living space results in the tearing of Indigenous Peoples’ identities. The deprivation and deprivation of Indigenous Peoples from various sides has resulted in the destruction of the nation’s return to independence. Therefore, the Indigenous Peoples Bill must ensure comprehensive and integral recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. This recognition is very important for the sake of active involvement and participation in sovereign national food policy-making. As mentioned earlier, recognition in the Indigenous Peoples Bill must reverse the residual logic of the Dutch Colonial Domeinverklaring inheritance rights.
The Indigenous Peoples Bill must also ensure that the involvement and active participation is two-way so that there is a healthy dialectic space between Indigenous Peoples as the side of the Nation’s Rights and the State’s Rights. In the Indigenous Peoples Bill, it is necessary to further review the meaning of empowerment which has been one-way. Empowerment must ensure that there is no space for dependence on external parties, especially the space for the return of excessive dependence on the market so that Indigenous Peoples, especially in farming, do not over-depend on inputs and means of production from outside. The food system of Indigenous Peoples relies on the reproduction of nature and its social reproduction in its living space so that empowerment does not damage the cycle of the food system as we have gone through in the past.
In closing, the ratification of the Indigenous Peoples Law is very important in paving the way for food sovereignty where the rights of the nation (especially Indigenous Peoples) as the determinant and main subject of national food policies and systems, are not only dominated by the rights of the state an sich (which is increasingly on the side of corporations and escorted by the military). Even so, the struggle is still long. There are still many challenges ahead for food sovereignty to return to the lap of Indigenous Peoples, such as overseeing the Revision of the Forestry Law and closely monitoring the revision of the UUPA. Indigenous Peoples’ food sovereignty cannot be upheld without agrarian sovereignty!
Disclaimer: This article was written in Indonesia and has been translated by Google Translate. In case of dispute or discrepancy, the original language of the article should prevail.
