The Long Road to Becoming a Farmer in Kebumen, Central Java, Indonesia

Abstract

This chapter presents the trajectories of young men and women into farming and is based on the authors’ research in two villages in Kebumen Regency, Central Java. In our study, we have prioritized the perspectives of young people themselves in respect of their own experiences and pathways as farmers. The chapter consists of four sections. First, we describe the background of the selected location as well as the methodology and techniques of field data collection. The second section provides a picture of the economy, society, and agrarian structure in the two research locations. The third section describes various dimensions of young people’s trajectories into farming and how they respond to the various obstacles and challenges that they face, using the respondents’ own words where possible. The last section offers some conclusions and reflections.

Introduction

This chapter presents the trajectories of young men and women into farming and is based on the authors’ research in two villages in Kebumen Regency, Central Java. In our study, we have prioritized the perspectives of young people themselves in respect of their own experiences and pathways as farmers. The chapter consists of four sections. First, we describe the background of the selected location as well as the methodology and techniques of field data collection. The second section provides a picture of the economy, society, and agrarian structure in the two research locations. The third section describes various dimensions of young people’s trajectories into farming and how they respond to the various obstacles and challenges that they face, using the respondents’ own words where possible. The last section offers some conclusions and reflections.

Research Context and Methodology

As explained above, this chapter is based on our July 2017 field research in two villages in Kebumen Regency, which we call Sidosari and Pudak Mekar (see Fig. 13.1).¹ In selecting the two research locations, we aimed to ensure contrasts in patterns of access to land, types of farming, diversity of livelihood sources, and topology.

Fig. 13.1

The location of Sidosari and Pudak Mekar (Kebumen Regency, Central Java)

Sidosari village was selected as a lowland village, located near the Kebumen Regency capital (approximately 10 kilometres away). The villagers’ main crop is irrigated rice. Technical irrigation channels water the fields, enabling two rice crops per year; in the third (dry) season, rice is planted with green beans with minimum treatment—the seeds are sown and waiting for harvest.

Pudak Mekar village, in contrast, is a coastal village further from the city centre (approximately 20 kilometres). Most of the villagers are dryland farmers; others are fishermen. The farmland is dry, with sandy soil, and difficult to irrigate. Rainfed rice can be planted only once a year in the rainy season. Other common crops are vegetables and fruits.

The study employed mainly qualitative methods, including in-depth, life-history interviews with 29 young farmers—11 females and 28 males aged 17–43 years—with an average age of 32 years. Where possible, we also interviewed the spouses of our male and female respondents.

We identified our respondents in both research villages in two stages. First, a staff member of a local civil society organization (CSO) and village officers provided us with a list of potential young farmer respondents. This effort produced names of mostly male respondents. We then used the snowballing technique to identify young female farmers and modify the list, replacing several of the listed males with female respondents. Aside from the interviews with young farmers, we spoke to various key informants, including the parents of young farmers, village officials, and staff of the Kebumen Regency Department of Agriculture.

During our field research, we stayed in each village for 10 days. This allowed us to observe everyday activities and interactions and to build rapport and help the local people to feel comfortable in our presence. In 2014, other AKATIGA researchers had conducted research in Sidosari for a food sovereignty project. In 2019, one of this chapter’s authors returned to Sidosari for a different research project and was able to update some of the information on young farmers in the villages.

Local Context and Agrarian Structure

Kebumen is regarded as a “food-basket” regency with approximately 83,000 hectares (ha) of rice fields and producing surplus rice for other districts in Central Java (BPS 2019). In Sidosari, according to the Sidosari village profile for 2017, the area of irrigated rice fields is 98 ha with 44 ha of dry fields. In the coastal village of Pudak Mekar, in contrast, there are no irrigated rice fields and the area of dry fields is about 66 ha.

There exist two types of land ownership in the villages: individual and village-owned land (commonly called village treasury land). The village-owned land generally has two functions: “prosperity land” and “bengkok land.” Bengkok land is allocated to village officials in lieu of salary and as a retirement benefit after they have left office. The area of bengkok land allocated to each village official varies depending on the area of land that the village owns as well as each village’s policy on its allocation. On average, the village head is allocated around 4–5 hectares of bengkok land, the village secretary gets 1.5–3 hectares, and other officials get less than 1 hectare.

Village treasury land can also be designated as “prosperity land.” Each village has its own policies for its management. This land is usually rented to the villagers and the village officials manage the rental income as PA Desa or “village own source revenue”; it can be used for operational and overhead expenses needed for village administration. Pudak Mekar village does not possess prosperity land; all of the village land has been designated as bengkok land due to the limited area of village-owned land—only 9.2 ha compared to 19.7 ha in Sidosari (see Table 13.1).

Table 13.1 Village treasury land in Sidosari and Pudak Mekar

In Sidosari, 7 ha of the total 19.7 ha of village-owned land is rented to villagers on a rotating basis, divided into 77 land plots with an area of about 38–77 ubins² or approximately 100–500 m² for each plot. For the last decade, the village government has rented out this land at a lower price than the current market rate. In 2019, the rent price of prosperity land for two growing seasons ranged from US$120 to US$180 per 100 ubin, depending on location and the quality of available irrigation.

With this rotating rent system, every poor/marginalized household has a fair chance to rent the land. Registration for land rental is opened annually, and those who have not had rented land in the past are prioritized in the next rental period. Only poor households may register. This policy has helped to provide agricultural land access for the landless (Ambarwati et al. 2016). Landless young couples appreciate this opportunity as an affordable way to access agricultural land.

Among the 77 prosperity land plots, there is one plot called the “youth farm,” which is 77 ubin or around 1000 m². The Sidosari village government uses the rental income from this plot (about US$90 annually) to fund Karang Taruna, the local youth organization. Previously, the youth community never cultivated this land. In early 2019, the village government allocated a new smaller farm plot of 56 ubin (almost 800 m²) with number one quality land—closest to irrigation—for the youth community to manage. This land is farmed collectively by a number of young couples. They manage the revenue earned from the harvest as collective petty cash. As a collective farming activity on a small plot of land, this activity does not provide significant extra income to youth community members. However, this young people’s farming initiative has gained the trust of village officials, and the local government recently—two years—provided a new, more fertile plot for the youth community to manage.

Election candidates for village head in Sidosari and Pudak Mekar use the bengkok land as a political tool; the newly elected village head always gives the use rights of some bengkok land to his supporters. In Sidosari, the village head promised that if he were elected, he would give some of the bengkok lands (use rights) to every hamlet head and musholla (little mosque) in order to make revenue available for operational activities. In Pudak Mekar, the village head used his bengkok land as a form of reward for his campaign team and local supporters. These use rights for bengkok land are doled out for the village head’s six-year term of office.

In both research villages, land control (access and ownership) among our young farmer sample is less than 2800 m² on average (median of 2100 m²). The young farmers accessed their land through a variety of channels: inheritance, a gift from living parents, purchase, cash rental, mortgage, and share tenancy. As shown in Table 13.2, the great majority of the 29 respondents farmed a combination of owned and rented or sharecropped land; only 21 per cent were pure owner—owned all of the land they worked—10 per cent were pure tenants who paid rent in cash, with the remaining 3 per cent pure tenants combining cash rental and share tenancy. Among those who owned some or all of their land, the most common road to ownership in both villages was a hibah (gift) of land from still-living parents to their children.

Table 13.2 Land access and land ownership of 29 respondents

In our young farmer sample, there were no significant inequalities in farm sizes or socio-economic conditions. As shown in Table 13.3, the majority of male and female respondents are junior high school graduates, while only 18 per cent of young female farmers and 6 per cent of young male farmers are senior high school graduates.

Table 13.3 Education and marital status of young farmer respondents

Table 13.3 also shows that all of our female respondents are married, while many (44 per cent) of the male respondents are single. Large numbers of both young women and young men migrate for work after leaving school. After marriage, most women remain in the village and involve themselves in farming while many married men continue to migrate.

Young People’s Pathways into Farming

The majority of young farmers in both villages, as in the rest of Java, are “successor” farmers or, as Monllor (2012) calls them, “continuers.” This refers to those who take over the family farm. Many of these farmers, however, are “late continuers”—those who first leave the parental farm to engage in other work (whether inside or beyond the village) and return to farming later in life as land becomes available (White 2019: 22). Most young farmers have previous migration experience, working in non-agricultural jobs before returning home to engage in small-scale farming combined with other income sources (White and Wijaya, in this book). For both younger and older generations, farming has never been their only source of income. Apart from farming, they are still engaged in other sources of livelihoods in or outside the village, sometimes including temporary or seasonal work in large cities.

Access to agricultural resources significantly affects the agricultural practices of young farmers. Agriculture resources, particularly land, are mostly accessed through a hibah of land from still-living parents. Those whose parents own more than a small plot of land are more likely to receive land from their parents and also find it easier to negotiate in order to obtain access to the land sooner than young people whose parents only have a small plot. This land transfer process impacts the timing of their return to farming. During the waiting period, as indicated above, young people migrate and engage in non-agriculture work. Their involvement with farming before marriage is largely to assist their parents. After marriage, those who have acquired land from their parents will have more independence in their farming practices. Others who are still waiting for land become their parents’ helpers or enter into a sharecropping agreement with them.

The young farmers who we interviewed have no formal agricultural training, but since childhood, they have been observing and participating in their parents’ agriculture activities. As continuer farmers, they do not always practise the same modes of farming that they learned as children. Their migration experience—the opportunity to meet different types of people—and access to information technologies often encourage them to be more creative than their parents. These young farmers tend to be “risk takers” in crop choice, seeking out investment to start farming or experimenting with different farming techniques. While their parents prefer to grow staple food crops such as rice or maize, the younger generation’s farming methods are adjusted based on their own experience and the context of technological development in their environment. Their innovations are commonly paired with creativity,³ not in terms of the introduction of sophisticated equipment or technology, but rather creative experimentation with new crops and new ideas that aim to improve productivity.

Girls are generally less in contact with farming than boys while still attending school. As they age, leave school, and often leave for work outside the village, marriage becomes their way to return to the village—both their village or husband’s village—and farm. Women are involved in most farming processes, but ironically, they receive less recognition and support as female farmers.

Farming Experience in Childhood

All of our respondents told us that they have experience helping their parents on the farm or in the rice field when they were children. In both villages, children were, on average, 11 years old or in the fifth grade of primary school when they first start helping their parents on the farm (median age of nine years or third grade). This involvement, however, usually halts with a child’s transition to secondary school, with its longer school hours and homework requirements. Besides providing help to their parents, the children played around the fields as well; they learn by observing how their parents work, preparing the ground, planting, weeding, and harvesting. Such childhood experiences still linger in their memories. Mahdi (male, age 34, Pudak Mekar) recalls: “I was first asked to go to the farm by my parents when I was about eight. At that time, I was ngasak [gleaning]⁴ the rice, sweet potato, or other vegetables. The yield from ngasak was sold for our daily needs. Previously, I was asked to collect grass to feed our family’s livestock.”

In Pudak Mekar, boys and girls gather grass. Farmers in Pudak Mekar own more livestock than those in Sidosari; the majority of households in the former own one or more goats or cows. Mila (female, age 34, Sidosari) remembers: “I used to go to the farm when I was in sixth grade, I just went along with my parents. I did ngarit too (gathering grass to feed the livestock) together with other friends.”

As they are now adults and many have become parents of their own children, they do not encourage their children in the same way as their parents did—playing around and helping out on their parents’ farm. The long school hours, including travel time and homework, are the main reasons that they do not ask their children to help on the farm. Secondary school is a full-time activity from early morning to late afternoon so they don’t want to burden their children by asking them to help out; instead, they encourage them to stay home and rest.

Andi (male, age 45, Sidosari) was helping his parents’ derep (harvesting another’s farm) as a teenager. Derep can be done individually or in groups. Derep in a group, in Sidosari and in other neighbouring villages, is largely composed of male farmers, unlike some other areas of Java. Women are assumed to be slower in rice harvesting work.

Unlike him, Andi’s oldest daughter (Ina, age 19, Sidosari) has never helped him in the fields. She only helps serving meals to the farmers. His wife Susi (age 38, Sidosari) adds: “Girls nowadays don’t want to help on the farm at all, they are afraid to get tanned. No girls now want to do tandur (rice transplanting), they just let their mothers do the work instead. It’s different compared to the previous generations; we began to be hard workers in our early life.”

Just as experienced by Andi and Susi, Imah (female, age 32, Sidosari) spent much of her childhood—since the third grade—helping her parents to farm. She felt no shame or laziness in helping out her parents at that time.

I can clearly remember when I was little, I used to run errands helping out on the farm while playing around at the same time. It was playing yet working. In the dry season, I helped out planting peanuts on another farmer’s land and earned US$0.04. I was very excited since it was my first time earning money myself. I didn’t give the money to my mum; I spent the money myself.

Sam (male, age 38, Pudak Mekar) gives pocket money to his children so they are willing to help on the farm. For example, he told us that he gives his son Rasif, a sixth grader, pocket money for his help watering the chillies and cutting grass to feed the livestock.

Access to Farm Land

Farming requires land capital. “Land is important, the most important,…” says Rajif (male, age 35, Pudak Mekar). “As long as we own land, even though we don’t have money for production, we can go to the middleman—just tell him that you want to farm and he will give you some money as your working capital. He won’t lend you any money if you don’t have land to plough.”

Land is one of the most basic needs for young people in both villages to start farming. As noted above, access to land can be gained through inheritance, a grant from still-living parents, purchase, cash rent, mortgage, and share tenancy. As seen in Table 13.2, most young farmers in our sample own part or all of the land that they cultivate. Many of their parents, especially in Pudak Mekar, have granted their land to their children as use rights. When the parents die, ownership will transition to the children. Of our respondents, 48 per cent started farming on land that their parents had granted to them, while another 28 per cent had inherited land. One reason that parents, even when owning only a small amount of land, feel able to grant land to their children is that their livelihoods are based on multiple income sources, so that giving some land to their children does not disturb their household income too seriously.

Parents generally give land to married children. They will pass on the land with the hope that their children will learn how to farm independently. In both villages, it is assumed that after marriage, young people begin in earnest to learn how to farm. It is easier for children from rich farmer families to ask their parents for land. Tari (female, age 43, Sidosari) asked her parents to purchase for her a small farm when she turned 25 and married. Her parents own a roof tile factory in the village. She knew that she would receive an inheritance from her parents, so she dared to express her wish to have her own farm. Her elder brother received 35 ubin of land from his parents after his marriage. Tari shares: “I dared to tell my parents that the land owned by my younger brother-in-law was for sale, I think it’s better if I buy it rather than it’s sold to other people. I asked my father to buy the farm and I offered myself to manage it. My parents agreed on that and bought the farm right away.”

In another case, prosperous parents in Pudak Mekar gave 100 ubin of land to their son Dandy, (male, age 28) even though he was unmarried. Dandy’s father runs a sawmill business and Dandy cultivates horticultural crops on the land. “I asked my parents for some land. I used to harvest papayas on another farm, I had been wanting to cultivate by myself, then my father allowed me to do it.”

For farmers who do not own large farms and/or do not have significant non-farm income, intergenerational land transfers are more difficult. There are many young farmers who, although they are already married, are still helping on their parents’ farm without any revenue-sharing agreement and are still dependent on their parents for their daily needs. Ano (age 27, Sidosari) and his wife Eni (age 25, Sidosari) still live in Ano’s parents’ house and help cultivate their land. Even though his father (Kamsi, age 57, Sidosari) thinks that Ano seems to be ready to farm independently, he does not entrust the farm to Ano and Eni yet because he thinks that there is not enough land to share among all of his children. Ano’s father cultivates 43 ubin and says that he will continue managing it himself. Another rice field of 40 ubin that Ano and Eni manage is rented from his father for a period of two years. His father needed cash at that time and asked Ano to rent his rice field. The rental price that the young couple pay is regular market price. Kamsi says: “I don’t know yet about inheritance. Even though I am already old and don’t have much energy left, I don’t think of passing on the land to my children. I will offer them share tenancies instead, so that I still can enjoy part of the harvest.”

Renting land is also common in Kebumen. It can be accessed from other farmers (or a parent) or from village treasury land, as explained above. Especially in Sidosari, the village government has a particular way of managing prosperity land that supports poor villagers. The charged rental price is lower than the regular rental price. Moreover, unlike private land rentals where the rental must be paid in advance, the rental payment can be paid one month after the bidders have been granted a tenancy on the prosperity land. For young (married) people with low and uncertain incomes, access to prosperity land is a good opportunity for them to start farming because they can afford to pay the rent. “I gladly support the new auction⁵ system, which no longer uses the higher price to get a plot of land,” says Imah (female, age 32, Sidosari). “If we rent the land from auction, expenses for meals can be saved for additional investment for the next renting period.”

The situation is the same for Eni: “So far I have farmed on village treasury land three times. The village treasury land auction is very much in demand because the price is much cheaper than the general rental price. In the past, auctions were not like now; in the past those who could rent were villagers who had money because it was rented to the highest bidder.”

Intergenerational land transfers work through the inheritance system. In contrast to the children of rich family farmers, Sugi (male, age 38, Sidosari), the son of a poor farmer who owns less than 60 ubin (840 m²) of land, explained that he received access to family’s land only after his parents passed away, six years after his marriage and when he already had three children. “I didn’t dare to ask my parents for land, I was too young (32 years old at that time). Even after I got married, I was still dependent on my parents. As a son, I just accepted all things. Alhamdulillah, I got the land (448 m² of rice field) after my father died.”

Land inheritance practices in our two research villages are not solely based on Islamic inheritance law where sons get a two-thirds share and daughters receive one-third. Some parents divide the lands equally among their children and others do not. Both male and female children who are considered more responsible may inherit a larger portion than those considered less responsible. Dimas (male, age 26, Sidosari) remembers: “I started to farm independently [meaning: all decisions and harvest time are done by himself] in 2010 after my parents passed away. I was 19 at that time, when I managed the 100 ubin (1400 m²) of land that my parents owned. Now, some of the land is already mine.”

Dimas inherited a relatively larger share than his siblings. The youngest child, he stayed in the village and took care of his ailing parents until they died because his two brothers had migrated to Sumatra. He himself had migrated to Bandung (West Java) but had to return home to take care of his parents. His parents asked him to help on the farm because they were elderly and sick. They offered to give him a plot of land if he returned home permanently. Parents commonly make inheritance decisions; for the children, raising questions about inheritance matters is considered impolite or taboo because it suggests that they hope that their parents will die soon.

Rajif says that all of the decisions about the division of land among his siblings will be made by his father. “Maybe shares will be more or less equal. But honestly, it hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t know how it will be. There has been no discussion yet, informally or formally, with the family members on how the lands will be divided in the future.”

Migration and Pluriactivity

For many young people, out-migration is an option during the “waiting” period until they can access land. In Sidosari, earlier migration patterns influence migration destinations; for instance, young men tend to migrate to Riau and Palembang, Sumatra to work on oil palm plantations or to Jakarta where they work as freight container labourers in Tanjung Priok Harbour. Young women mostly prefer to migrate to Bandung or Jakarta where they find work as shop assistants or housemaids. In Pudak Mekar and Sidosari, some young migrants have found work abroad in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong. In both villages, the majority of young women and almost all of the young men in our sample have migration experience, as shown in Table 13.4.

Table 13.4 Migration experience of young farmer sample

Youth migration is not a new phenomenon. When the parents of our young farmer sample were younger, they generally experienced migration as well. One of the reasons for migration is to save money for farming activities. Kamsi, for example, migrated and worked in the city while saving money to rent land in his home village; he thought that he could not be a farmer without owning land after he returned to the village. His parents were landless tenant farmers, so he had no prospect of inheriting land. “I got married when I was 25; I migrated while I was still single. We needed money to rent a farm (land) at that time, so I went away to earn and save some money. Migrating is best in the dry season when we can’t earn anything by working as tenant farmers.”

Ano also regularly migrated to Jakarta to work on road construction projects for two months at a time, returning to the village for the harvest season and migrating again to a different destination depending on the available work opportunities. Ano stopped migrating after his first child was born. Since then, he and his wife have focused on farming while also earning money weaving caping (a traditional conical-shaped farmer’s hat made of woven bamboo).

Nearly all of the villagers in Sidosari—both young and old, male and female—are engaged in caping making. Previously, there were several caping distributors, but since 2016, only one distributor remains and the piece price for the finished product has declined. The income earned for 20 caping ranges between US$1 and US$2 with a production duration of 1.5 days. Earlier, the payment for caping from middlemen was often delayed, so the crafts(wo)men had to wait a few days despite having delivered the product. In Pudak Mekar, young women engage in another low-return handicraft activity—making floor mats from coconut fibres. They first wind the fibres into long ropes. It takes three hours to make a five-metre rope, which sells for US$0.15. One floor mat sells for only IDR 3000 (US$0.20).

Options for non-agricultural incomes in Pudak Mekar are more varied than in Sidosari. Apart from farming, most farmers keep cows or goats. Even though they only have a few animals, they say that keeping livestock is a way to save money for expensive needs like house building or repairs, hospital bills, and wedding parties. Their crops are used for their daily needs. Many also plant rumput gajah (elephant grass, Pennisetum purpureum) on part of their land as livestock fodder.

Some young men in Pudak Mekar are fishermen. They take daily fishing trips during four months of the year. Every trip requires a substantial investment. Besides the boat and equipment, one needs at least US$7143 for logistics, fuel, and food supplies for one boat with three to five fishermen on board. Even though they rarely go fishing, some of the interviewed respondents, including Na’im (male, age 31, Pudak Mekar), say that fisherman is the formal occupation that is written on their identity card:

My occupation written on my ID Card is fisherman. I usually go sailing in Sura month (Muharram month in Islamic calendar), it could be every day in that month, and I temporarily leave my farming job. I pay for tenants to cultivate my farm. If I get lucky and the sea is not too rough, I can earn millions. But if I’m not lucky, the money is only sufficient to cover the fuel costs.

Another non-farm income source is sand digging in the Luk Ulo River, which is located on the edge of Pudak Mekar. Only young men do this work because it is physically demanding. Sand digging starts in the evening and ends the next morning. The diggers stand in the river all night, digging the sand from the river floor and carrying it to a pickup truck. For one night’s work (about 8–10 hours), they can earn up to US$11. Sand digging is mostly done during the growing season because there is less work to do than during the harvest season. The money that wage workers earn from sand mining is often used to finance horticultural crop planting, which requires a fairly high investment when compared to rice, cassava, or maize. Most young farmers in Pudak Mekar choose to plant horticultural crops because the schedules of farming and non-farm work can be flexibly combined. As Rajif explains:

Most young men earn money by working as daily labourers, as sand diggers or sawmill labourers. The sawmill workers go briefly to the fields from 6 to 7 in the morning, then work at the sawmill from 8 in the morning till noon. From 5 p.m. till dusk, they go back to the fields. If they need more money for farming, they can work as sand diggers in the evening. Farm incomes are very uncertain; sometimes the harvest is good, but the price is low. Sometimes the price is high, but weevils ruin the crops. Sawmill or sand digging work provides stable earnings, but it doesn’t make people smart because they work monotonously. In the sawmill the work is in silence, just cutting the wood. And in sand digging, we don’t have much time to chat with other because we have to reach the target. When we’re farming, we use our brain, thinking about how to eradicate the weevils, sharing with other farmers, and we can enrich our knowledge.

Innovation: Different Ways of Farming, New Sources of Information

Compared to their parents, young farmers in both villages are more adventurous in trying new farming practices. This includes taking risks, choosing methods of farming that require more investment, new seed varieties, new farming techniques, and more intensive practices. In Pudak Mekar, young farmers mostly grow horticultural crops while their parents prefer to plant rice, cassava, or maize, which have a relatively longer growing season, but require less maintenance and lower production costs.

Most young male farmers, including Dandy (male, age 28, Pudak Mekar), think that horticulture is more interesting and the revenue is relatively fast to earn: “It’s different now and then. People in the past grew peanuts, rice, maize, or cassava, just all of them, without variation. Now we grow bitter gourds, chillies, or long beans. The planting process as well as the treatment is different.” Rajik confirms that young people tend to prefer horticulture. “It’s different with maize, where when we have finished planting, we just have to wait till harvest time.”

Muhtar (male, age 28, Pudak Mekar) says that the move to farming was his own initiative after he left his job in a garment factory in nearby Kebumen city. “When I went out I saw a garden planted with bitter gourds. They looked good, so I wondered what if I try it, and I immediately tried planting them by myself.” At first, he worked together with his brother. They cultivate their parents’ 7,1 ubin (100 m²) of land. According to him, farming together with his sibling is quite easy. “It is less of a burden if we farm together, one can pull up the weeds and another one can water the plants.” For Muhtar and his brother, even though their parents are farmers, planting horticultural crops is new for them; their parents prefer to plant elephant grass to feed their livestock.

Muhtar uses the internet to locate information about horticulture. He often searches for the best treatment for weevils or other pests and diseases that could potentially damage bitter gourds. He also looks to his farmer friends who have experience in planting horticultural crops. Toni (male, single, age 37, Pudak Mekar) also often uses his smartphone to search on the internet and to expand his knowledge about weevils and other pests, such as the silver-leaf whitefly (Bemisia tabaci), aphids (Aphidoidea), and thrips (Thrips tabaci lindeman) that often damage his vegetable plants: oyong (Luffa acutangula), chillies, cucumbers, tomatoes, and long beans. He also learns about the active ingredients in the various recommended pesticides. The pesticide brands recommended on the internet are often not common in Pudak Mekar or in nearby farm stores, so he looks for other brands that have the same active ingredients. He prefers to search for information online because it can be accessed anytime and is more practical instead of having to ask other farmers or the fertilizer merchant.

Uji (male, age 21, Sidosari) also uses the internet on his smartphone to learn how to make anti-plant-hopper pesticide (Fulgoromorpha) using natural ingredients. Based on this information, he makes a liquid pesticide from boiled soursop leaves and sweet flag (Acorus calamus, a kind of rhizome with a specific smell). It is applied by spraying the liquid on the lower branches of the plants. He also uses a different rice planting method from his parents. The legowo system, which involves reducing the space between plants in each row, but leaving an empty row after every fourth row, ensures better photosynthesis and ease of plant protection. He acquired this knowledge at a briefing meeting that the local Department of Agriculture hosted in the village office. He went to the meeting in his parents’ place because only older farmers were invited. According to Uji, the legowo system is better because it requires less seeds and produces better yields. He also applies natural fertilizers that he makes from livestock manure.

The young farmers frequently experiment with new practices to improve crop productivity. Rajif uses plastic mulch on the raised beds of his chilli plants to prevent weed growth, a technique that he has been using for the last five years. For him, plastic mulch is very pricy; it costs US$35–50 a roll with a width of 1–1.5 metres and a length of 250–500 metres. As a cheaper substitute, he sometimes purchases used plastic from shrimp farm owners, paying only US$14–21 for the equivalent of a double large size roll of mulch. The farmers contact the shrimp farmer by phone or SMS to order the used plastic. Mahdi has tried using MSG (food flavouring, Monosodium Glutamate) as an alternative growth stimulator for his chilli plants, combining it with milk powder in water. He learned this tip from successful farmers in the neighbouring village.

Young farmers are also more willing to borrow capital from other parties when compared to their parents. There are several options available, including loans from middlemen, banks, or relatives. Dandy borrows money from a local vegetable trader in Pudak Mekar; according to him, borrowing money from a local middleman is easier than borrowing from the bank because the middleman will buy the harvested vegetables right after they are harvested. The middleman’s purchase price, Dandy says, is not much different from the prices that other brokers pay. The loan then provides Dandy with his working capital and a guaranteed buyer for his produce. Dandy told us that he once borrowed IDR 15 million (around US$1000) for his investment in planting bitter gourds. The loan enabled him to earn a net profit of US$145 in the short growing season (40 days). In contrast with Dandy, Toni and Mahdi prefer to take bank loans. They are registered for KUR (small-scale enterprise credit) at the BRI Bank. Toni has accessed KUR several times for IDR 5–6 million (US$350–420) loans, using his BPKB (motorcycle ownership certificate) as a guarantee. The loan is repaid after each harvest or after six months (two harvests) for his small tomato and cucumber farm. For Toni, “to become a farmer, capital and land are the important things. The first thing is land: if there is no land, we cannot farm, but we can start by renting from others, so capital is the most important.”

Lack of Support for Young Farmers

Young farmers in both villages do not receive the same recognition as farmers when compared to older farmers, and this can affect their access to resources. As in the other Indonesian research sites (Flores and Kulon Progo), older farmers or larger landowners always dominate the village-level, state-sponsored Poktan (Farmers’ Group). Almost all of the villages in Java have Poktan groups, and many of them are members of the local Gapoktan (Association of Farmers’ Groups). The Poktan is the official conduit for government training, counselling, and subsidies, commonly in the form of fertilizers, seeds, or hand tractors. In reality, almost all farmers’ groups do not engage in group activities and tend to be passive recipients of subsidies.

Na’im and several other men in Pudak Mekar prefer to state their occupation as fisherman for their identity cards, even if most of their working time is spent farming. One of the main reasons for this choice is that those registered as fishermen receive more support from the government when compared to support for small farmers. Nai’im received a fishing boat, complete with nets, as aid from the government. But in his work as a farmer, he has never received any support from the village, regency, or central government. Muhtar concurs:

The Farmers’ Group in this village is passive; it does have some activities, but they don’t run well. The Poktan here doesn’t even have a mantri tani (a government-employed agricultural extension worker also called a PPL); we only have a visiting veterinarian (for livestock) from the Kebumen Regency Department of Agriculture. Village officials have no programmes that support young people in this village in their farming activities. The village should have a programme to help young people to do farming. I would recommend the village officials to support them with agricultural equipment.

For young farmers like Dimas in Sidosari, although owning land is their right, they do not have access to Poktan membership. “I have never been invited to join the meeting of the farmer group. There was once an announcement that a representative of the Department of Agriculture was coming to the village office to provide training to the farmers, yet I wasn’t invited.” He has never met a government agricultural official.

Our female young farmer respondents, including Imah, claim that they did not even know that there is Poktan in their village:

I have never known, let alone joined, the meetings related to agriculture, either in our neighbourhood or in the village. I don’t know anything about Poktan either; have never been there, I’m just doing this kind of farming (as a landless tenant farmer). I have never met the PPL in the fields or in the village office. If there is a problem with my crops, I go to my brother for advice—he is an experienced farmer. I and my husband have never tried to look for information on how to farm or how to exterminate pests or disease through the internet. As long as I have been farming, I have never received fertilizer aid from the government. It says that there is subsidized fertilizer, but I know nothing about that. In fact, fertilizer is hard to get and more expensive; we buy it from the nearest merchant. My farm that I plant is not large, so I buy the fertilizer in retail. TS (super phosphate) fertilizer costs US$1.1 per five kilogrammes, while urea is US$0.8.

Santo (age 55) is Secretary of the Kebumen Regency Department of Agriculture. He told us that agricultural mechanization is one way to attract young people to farming. Yet, they—Department of Agriculture officers—realize that agricultural support or aid is always distributed through the Poktan, whose members are mostly older farmers.

Institutionally, young farmers don’t yet have a (formal) organization. We (Department of Agriculture) don’t dare to establish young farmer groups due to concerns about violating rules or legal sanctions. The farmers’ groups that have been approved by the law at village level are Poktan, Gapoktan, Farmers Association, and the Food Security Board. These are the official groups that have the right to access aid from the local and central governments. All supports/aids from the Department of Agriculture are distributed through these groups.

Conclusion

Becoming a young farmer in Sidosari and Pudak Mekar is a long process. Even though their parents are also farmers and they grow up around the farm, young men and women wishing to start farming face various challenges, including access to land, access to capital, and the lack of adequate recognition and support for young farmers. Their experiences of migration and work in various non-agricultural activities have coloured their pathways to becoming a farmer during their “waiting period.”

Young farmers admit that they must be more willing to take risks than their parents. They want a more profitable farming model, different from the agriculture that their parents practice. Access to information, either through direct contact with the fertilizer merchant or via the internet, has become their preferred channel for learning and training opportunities related to agriculture.

There are many government programmes on paper that feature the jargon of millennial farmer programmes. But in many cases, such as in our two research villages in Kebumen, young farmers have not received any significant support. The government’s subsidy and training programmes are still biased towards, and dominated by, older generation male farmers. As we have seen, in responding to the challenges of being a farmer, young farmers in Kebumen have largely sought their own solutions.