[asia-apec 1224] New Development Report from Food First- Manufacturing a Crisis: The Politics of Food Aid in Indonesia

[Anuradha Mittal]

<bold><fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger><bigger>Institute for
Food and Development Policy-Food First Announces the Release of:


<italic>Manufacturing a Crisis :

The Politics of Food Aid in Indonesia


</italic></bigger></bigger></fontfamily></bold><fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger><bigger>IFDP
Development Report no. 13


Oakland, CA-News of food shortages and hunger in Indonesia, reported to
be caused by  drought, alarmed the world in 1998 and 1999. According to
the Minister of Food Affairs and Horticulture, Indonesia was the
world's biggest recipient of food aid in 1998. But in recent months
news has filtered out that many agricultural communities are prospering
in the midst of the crisis. In view of these conflicting reports, South
East Asia Food Security and Fair Trade Council organized a fact-finding
mission to Indonesia in January 1999.

	

"Indonesia is not suffering a critical food shortage in the traditional
sense. We found a surreal juxtaposition of bounty and misery, caused by
the well-publicized economic collapse of the world's fourth most
populous nation," said Anuradha Mittal, who led one of four teams of a
fact-finding mission to Indonesia.


Over 100 million Indonesians, "half the country's population," are now
living below the poverty line, up from thirty million in 1997. In 1998
average Indonesians saw ten years of family savings wiped out by six
months of currency devaluation. By July the value of the rupiah had
fallen fifty percent against the U.S. dollar, pushing up prices and
squeezing earnings, hitting those who could least afford it the
hardest. "This crisis was caused by massive outflows of speculative
capital," said Mittal, "brought on by more than a decade of pressure
from the U.S., World Bank, and International Monetary Fund to open
Indonesia's financial markets to foreign investors.


Today many Indonesian banks and companies are on the brink of
bankruptcy, with more than a third of Indonesia's key electronics,
machinery, chemical, and metal-based industries forced to close. Every
day in Jakarta an estimated 15,000 workers lose their jobs. People have
begun migrating from cities back to the countryside. A bleak report
from the International Labor Organization states, "Without any
improvements in household income, further price increases in 1999 will
push some 140 million people, or 66 percent of the population, below
the poverty line." But is there a food shortage?


"Abundant food is available for those who can afford it, but few can
due to the economic collapse," said Mittal. "Yet the image of a food
shortage that can only be remedied with food aid continues to dominate.
Western donors have been rushing in wheat products, undercutting
rice-based food self-sufficiency and creating a long term market for
exports. The Indonesian government has used this aid to pacify the new
urban poor and consolidate support for the June 1999 elections. This
has been done with the total approval of foreign governments and
multilateral organizations." As a World Food Program official put it,
"Hungry people are angry people." 


In 1984 Indonesia was awarded the FAO medal in food self sufficiency,
while today the food aid pouring in threatens to turn it into a
permanent international beggar by bankrupting local agriculture.
"Economic conditions in Indonesia do not call for food aid. What is
needed are economic policies to provide jobs and income so people can
have an adequate diet, and buy goods and services to meet other needs.
Agriculture is in trouble in Indonesia, but it is a crisis that is
strictly man-made," said Mittal. "A huge dependence on fertilizers and
other chemical inputs characteristic of Green Revolution technology
resulted in a fragile rural economy that can easily be unraveled by
policy decisions for example, the recent ending of the fertilizer
subsidy. Indonesia is not experiencing a classic drought-driven famine.
It is experiencing economic collapse." 


Food First-founded in 1975 by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins
after the success of <italic>Diet for a Small Planet,  </italic>is an
'outside the beltway' policy think tank that carries out research and
education-for-action. Food First works to identify the root causes of
hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world, and to
educate the public as well as policymakers about these problems and
alternative solutions to them.


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Anuradha Mittal

Policy Director

Institute for Food and Development Policy - Food First

398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA

Phone: (510) 654-4400  Fax: (510) 654-4551

http://www.foodfirst.org