ANNUAL RICE PRODUCTION HIKES DON'T BENEFIT FARMERS : ASSOCIATION

Jakarta, Oct 15 (ANTARA) - The Indonesian Farmers Association (SPI) said the annual increases in domestic rice production touted by the government had proven unable to improve rice farmers' prosperity.

SPI chairman Henry Saragih said here on Thursday the rice production increases which had enabled the formation of more than adequate rice stocks had adversely affected the domestic rice price.

The rice price in the market was now more than Rp5,000 per kg or far in excess of the government-sanctioned price of Rp4,600 per kg which was too low compared to the inflation rate.

"This means that the rice production increases have not improved the welfare of paddy growers but reduced their prosperity," Saragih said.

He said with that condition the farmers who totaled 25.6 million families across the country were thus forced to subsidize urban people with low rice prices.

Saragih said that a rice self-sufficiency achieved in this way would not last long because farmers did not obtain enough incentives to be encouraged to plant more rice.

In the end, rice productivity would slow down while consumption would continue to increase in line with the increase in the population.

According to a study by SPI in 2007, he said, a farmer who had rented one hectare of rice field earned only Rp17,500 per day, and with this income a family of four would only earn Rp4,375 per day.

This condition was the same as that in the past.

He said that in 2009, an SPI study indicated that the rice self sufficiency did not improve farmers welfare.

Almost all farmers who are members of SPI earn an income of Rp500,000 per month.

Almost 96 percent of farmers in Bogor earned less then Rp500,000 per month, about 53 percent in Cirebon and in Kudus, Central Java about 53 percent earned less than Rp500,000 per month, he said.