Indonesian farmer Baban Sobandi, 40, struggles to make a living farming 2.5 acres of land on the island of Java.
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY KARAWANG, Indonesia — In this Indonesian city, what used to be 100 acres of rice paddy is a maze of row houses and pastel-colored storefronts: a motorcycle garage, a printer, a medical clinic and a noodle shop.
Until recently, this would have been just another green patch gone in a country where 100,000 acres of farmland vanish every year because of breakneck economic growth.
That may be changing. The global food crisis means that countries across Asia are making agriculture a higher priority and taking steps to grow more crops within their own borders.
"People suddenly care about agriculture," says Neil McCulloch, director for economics programs at the Asia Foundation office in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. "It takes a crisis to make everyone wake up and realize agriculture has been neglected."
Most of the world's attention has focused on India and China and how their booming economies, along with soaring fuel prices, have caused the price of food to rise across the globe, including the USA.
Indonesia — the world's fourth-most populous country (pop. 238 million) — is part of a second tier of countries where rapidly improving living standards lead to a greater appetite for better-quality food.
The jump in rice prices has been particularly acute here, a punch in the gut for Indonesians who consider a meal without rice no meal at all. Indonesians each consume more than 330 pounds of rice a year, second only to the Vietnamese.
The country has to import rice to cover its needs. Producing more on its own farms is problematic, as illustrated by the case of Baban Sobandi, 40, whose family farm has grown rice for generations.
Sobandi struggles to squeeze a living out of 2.5 acres of terraced land along the Cimande river in the village of Lema Duhur. The cost of fertilizer stays ahead of surging rice prices. He can't afford pesticides, relying on Allah to keep the bugs off his rice crop.
"Some of my friends got pests," he says, "but I think I was helped by my prayers."
Sobandi supplements his farming income by offering massages; his wife sells soda, instant coffee, cigarettes, noodles, cotton swabs and other items from a roadside shack. Together, they pull in $110 a month.
His farm would be more productive, he says, if several small "dams" — really just barriers of stone and wire — hadn't crumbled upriver. The dams no longer divert the Cimande's water to the rice paddies. Nobody's been able to come up with the $2,700 to build a new dam.
Asian governments have responded to such problems with quick-fix solutions that risk making things worse: Some have handed out food and fertilizer subsidies that threaten to bust swollen budgets. Others have banned rice exports — a beggar-thy-neighbor approach that drove prices higher.
"They're acting in a completely rational way," McCulloch says. "Everyone who's a significant rice provider wants to keep it inside its borders. Individually, these are rational decisions. But if everyone does it, it hurts everyone."
Asian countries will probably have to seek longer-term solutions, such as upgrading infrastructure.
Investment firm Credit Suisse and other observers expect tight food supplies — and high prices — to last for years, perhaps a decade. The crunch has been a long time coming.
"The area under cultivation for key crops has been nearly stagnant despite growing population and food needs," Credit Suisse said in a report this month.
Across Asia, growth in irrigated land is at a 50-year low. Rice cultivation has practically stalled, rising 0.7% a year this decade compared with 4.1% a year in the '60s, the report said.
"With regional grain inventories touching 30-year lows," the Credit Suisse report concluded, "the food situation can no longer be ignored."
As Asians get richer, their diets improve and put more pressure on food supplies. Meat gives Asians more than 18% of their dietary protein, double what it did in the '70s.
Indonesia's investment in agriculture has languished as farming took a back seat in recent decades to industry and services.
In 1970, agriculture accounted for 40% of Indonesia's gross domestic product; now it's less than 14%.
During the recent run of economic development, Indonesia cut back public spending on agriculture.
Irrigation canals eroded, dams crumbled and seed stocks grew obsolete. Increasing production is tough in a country where the average farm is smaller than 2 acres.
"So many things have to be fixed," says Rita Nur Suhaeti, researcher at the Indonesian Center for Agro Socio-Economic Analysis and Policy Studies in Bogor, here on the island of Java.
Last month, Indonesian Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said he expects nearly $20 billion in agricultural investments from 2005 to 2010 — the vast majority from private sources, not the government.
According to the minister, some of the money will be used to:
• Develop farmland outside the well-cultivated central island of Java.
• Overhaul irrigation systems.
• Produce higher-yielding seeds.
• Develop technologies such as driers that prevent wet rice from rotting.
• Offer micro-loans to poor farmers.
Edi Basuno, a senior researcher at the Agro Socio-Economic Analysis center, wants to see more effort put into a government initiative to get Indonesians to cut back on rice and try other starchy foods.
He says he'd like to see President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appear in public, tucking into a generous serving of sweet potatoes.
