A Thematic Shift in Academic Literatures on Agroforesty Systems in West Java, Indonesia

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman 

A final paper submitted to Prof. Miguel A. Altieri,  ESPM 118 "Agroecology",  Fall 2006. 5 December 2006  

Introduction

            Agroforestry have been practices in Java long before the term was originated by academic experts who thought they had invented something new.  It covers both agriculture that incorporates arable food crops, perennials and annuals and often also animals. Agroforestry systems appear in various forms, but all exhibit the same fundamental ecological, technical and socioeconomic qualities, such as soil protection, biodiversity conservation, use of simple techniques, high compatibility with knowledge systems, etc. Whitten et al proposes a useful definition to cover a broad range of agroforestry practices in Java, i.e.: “a system of permanent land use compatible with local culture practices and ecological conditions, by which both annual and perennial crops are cultivated simultaneously or in rotation, often in several layers, in such a way that sustained multiple-purpose production is possible under the beneficial effect of the improved edaphic and microclimate conditions provided by simulated forest” (Whitten et al 1995:600). Wiersum (1980) develops a classification of indigenous agroforestry systems of Java (see table 1), and founds that despite the many types of system in Java that can be found, identifies similar functional characteristics, i.e.:  

From Rightful Resistance toward Policy Advocacy: A Report on Forestry Land Reform Workshops in Java, Indonesia

Final Report of Human Right Summer Fellowship 2006,

Human Right Center

 Noer Fauzi Rachman

 

 

 

The State Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international cooperation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:

(a)   To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources; 

(b)   …

(International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Art. 11.2.)

 

 

Introduction

I am writing this report not as a neutral and detached observer, but as an engaged actor in the process of creating, developing and enforcing the rural social movements that will be discussed in the report. The brief report will not cover all the activities of my summer work in Indonesia (see attachment of my timetable), but will only concentrate on some workshops held by KARSA, a Jogjakarta-based NGO that I co-founded in 2002 that works to support rural and agrarian reform initiatives in various areas in Indonesia, with a focus on the concerns of rural communities. KARSA has also started a formal 5-year cooperation with the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley through Green Governance, Green Peace: A Program of International Exchange in Environmental Governance, Community Resource Management, and Conflict Resolution. Under this program KARSA is responsible for selecting and sending visiting scholars to Berkeley, managing research and workshops/trainings, and delivering some research-based papers and other related documents. This project is in concert with KARSA’s overall mission to support learning circles at various levels (local, regional and national), and to develop information networks between scholar-activists and concerned scholars on rural and agrarian reform.  Through this program, KARSA has organized workshops on forestry land reform in which participants compare cases of farmer initiatives to facilitate forestry land reform, mainly through land occupation tactics. 

Siapa Peduli Reforma Agraria Saat Ini?

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman

Dengan versi yang sedikit berbeda, tulisan ini dimuat di Forum Keadilan Edisi No.19, 03 September 2006. Versi ini dimuat dalam Harian IndoProgress, 22 November 2006.

https://indoprogress.com/2006/11/siapa-peduli-reforma-agraria-saat-ini/ 

 

Masalah penguasaan tanah (dapat diluaskan kepenguasaan alam), sangat relevan dipersoalkan saat ini. Sependek masa yang dikenal sebagai masa “reformasi,” semenjak 1998, di seantero pedesaan Indonesia, telah terjadi perubahan-perubahan yang penting dalam konteks tata penguasaan tanah dan kekayaan alam seperti, hutan, sumber-sumber tambang, air, pesisir dan laut.  

Perubahan konteks dari “siapa yang dapat memiliki, menggunakan dan mengelola, serta siapa yang mengontrol akses atas tanah, dan siapa yang memperoleh manfaat darinya” telah menjadi pusat perhatian penduduk setempat, para akademisi, aktivis gerakan sosial, manajer dan/atau konsultan-konsultan proyek, serta para pengelola usaha-usaha kegiatan konservasi, maupun para pegawai pemerintahan di pusat maupun di daerah –  yang bekerja di belakang meja maupun di lapangan. Penguasaan tanah dan sumber-sumber alam lainnya, bukan hanya menjadi “sumber daya yang diperebutkan” (contested resources) tapi,  telah menjadi ajang dari “pertarungan paradigma” (contested paradigm), dimana berbagai jawaban telah disodorkan agar dipakai oleh pembuat kebijakan maupun para pelaku di lapangan.

Membangun Jaringan Inteletual Neoliberal: Kasus Hernando de Soto

 

Noer Fauzi Rachman

Kim Malone

 

            Ekonom dan ilmuan sosial dunia ketiga nicaya mengenal karya Hernando De Soto. De Soto saat ini adalah konsultan dan konseptor ternama kelas wahid pada skala dunia dari banyak badan pembangunan/dana internasional seperti Bank Dunia, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Komisi Eropa, USAID hingga belum lama ini,  ia diangkat sebagai ketua kehormatan dari the High Level Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (HLCLEP), yang merupakan badan bentukan antar-pemerintahan Negara-negara Nordic (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norwagia and Sweden), yang didukung oleh pemerintah Canada, Egypt, Guatemala, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, dan badan internasional antara lain UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).  De Soto telah mendapatkan puji-pujian dari berbagai orang ternama di dunia, misalnya,  George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hamid Karzai, Alberto Fujimori, Milton Friedman, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, dll. The Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD, lembaga penelitiannya  de Soto) juga mendapatkan penghargaan istemewa dari lebih dari 20 universitas, badan pembangunan internasional, hingga perusahaan-perusahaan transnasional. Sejarah, karya-karya dan berbagai puja-puji ini dapat ditemukan dalam situs maya ILD (http://www.ild.org.pe)

Agrarian Reform and State Power in West Java, Indonesia: A Preliminary Research Prospectus

Noer Fauzi Rachman

The following is a document I made after a series of consultation with  my academic supervisor, Prof. Nancy Peluso in fall semester 2006, to develop a full research prospectus. My stage at the time was to develop a  prospectus for my dissertation research. Doctoral program at Department of ESPM (Environmental Science Policy and Management), UC Berkeley, require every PhD student to present his/her dissertation research prospectus at the moment of his/her qualifying exam. 

I. Introduction

Massive demands for agrarian reform exploded in Indonesia after President Soeharto, the leader of a 32 year-long authoritarian regime, was forced to step down in 1998.  While peasants all over Java occupied forest and plantation lands, a new decentralization law was passed, to be implemented in 2000. Rural groups and their supporters used rallies, demonstrations, and advocacy campaigns to convince new governments to endorse land reform policy. In 2001, the Peoples Assembly (MPR) mandated that the President and National Parliament of Republic of Indonesia (DPR) “reorganize land control, use and utilization (land reform) with special attention to local people’s ownership”. Five years later, little legal progress has been made, but land occupations continue.

Re: Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia

The following comments are from Prof. Kim Voss of Sociology Department at University California, Berkeley, for my research prospectus "Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia". I submitted the research prospectus as my final assignment for a course on Social Movement, Sociology 280S, Spring 2006. For her profile see: https://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/kim-voss 

My research prospectus is available at: https://www.noerfauzirachman.id/2006/05/ 

----

 To: Noer Fauzi Rachman

From: Kim Voss

 

Re:  Land Reform by Leverage: Understanding the Resurgence of Agrarian Movements in Contemporary Java-Indonesia,” research prospectus submitted for Sociology 280S, Spring 2006

 

            In this very intriguing proposal, you put forward a plan to look at the many land occupations that have occurred in recent years in West Java.  You begin with a thorough and highly informative literature review of both the social movements literature and the literature on peasant revolts, arguing that these two literatures need to be brought together.  You then lay out a series of hypotheses and describe your data sources. 

            I learned a great deal from your paper. You have obviously done a lot of thinking about this project.

Lagu Mukti-Mukti: Suara yang Dapat Dilihat

   

Noer Fauzi Rachman

Naskah ini ditulis atas permintaan Mukti-Mukti 14 Juli 2006. 

Dimuat kembali untuk mengenang 31 tahun perjalanan bermusiknya Mukti-Mukti, wafat pada Senin (15/8/2022) pukul 16.00 WIB, di kota Bandung.

 

Lagu-lagu Mukti-mukti dapat dilihat dan diperlihatkan, bukan sekedar dapat didengar dan diperdengarkan. Sejumlah film dokumenter membuktikannya. Yufik dan beberapa teman lain telah membuktikannya melalui film-film dokumenter yang dibuat para aktivis gerakan agraria.

 

Dalam film Mimpi-mimpi Bertarung di Sarimukti, petikan lagu berjudul Nangela menjadi jelas sosoknya sebagai tragedi para petani tidak bertanah di suatu desa dan usaha keras untuk mengungkap sebab-sebab yang membuat mereka menderita. Alunan lagu itu bersuarakan:

 

“Satu lagi pada dunia

Ku masih ada dan bersuara Meniti hari menanam rasa Dengan mereka yang buta kata Dengan mereka yang buta peta

Dengan mereka yang dilarang bertanya Bertanya tanah yang hilang

Kenapa hilang kenapa hilang.”

 

Lebih dari itu, saya menemukan petikan lagu Nangela juga merupakan saripati dari apa yang telah dan akan terus dilakukan aktivis gerakan agraria, yakni:

“Kuharus melangkah dan berkata-kata Kuharus menanam kata-kata”

 

Petikan lagu Duka Ibunda dari syair Budi Godot, yang merupakan pembuka film Duka Ibunda, Kesaksian Korban Operasi Wanalaga Lodaya 2003 di Kabupaten Garut Jawa Barat dapat dilihat sebagai ibu-ibu dan anak-anak yang menjeritkan rasa sakit mereka akibat tindakan pengusiran petani dari tanah garapan mereka, penangkapan beberapa orang yang dituduh sebagai kriminal, dan pengrusakan rumah-rumah dan tanam- tanaman yang bakal dipanen petani. Alunan lagu itu bersuarakan:

 

“Duka Ibunda, duka sepanjang zaman Sepasang sayapnya, adalah kasih sayang Merebak di keluasan, dari ufuk ke ufuk Melesat ke cakrawala, cakrawala ketinggian Memerah arak-arakan awan

Menjadi hujan di atas dahan-dahan Ranting, akar, dahan, jiwa pohon kita”

 

Saya mengalami lagu-lagu Mukti bukan sekedar untuk mendengarkannya. Tapi saya mengalami lagu-lagu itu juga untuk melihat kenyataan-kenyataan pahit hidup rakyat yang melebihi asal mula kenyataan penderitaan rakyat, penindasan, ironi dan romantika hidup yang menginsipirasi Mukti membuat lagu-lagu itu.

 

Dengar dan lihatlah. Bandung, 14 Juli 2006