44 The Global Food System
village in Central Java. They were asked how agricultural development had affected
their lives: 60 per cent answered that ‘development has made us in a difficult posi-
tion’. They said they were confused by the various government regulations, saying
in particular that two were unfair. These were that all farmers in the village had to
plant modern varieties on their rice paddies and that they had to follow a strict
cropping schedule. Farmers appreciated the rationale, but could not abide by the
regulations. They could not afford the modern inputs. They also ‘did not have the
courage not to abide by the regulations, as this would mean direct confrontation
with the village bureaucracy’. They reported to Soetrisno that in 1978 one small
farmer had to burn his rice when the local officials found out that he was planting
a local variety.
The order to all farmers to plant rice in a fixed schedule had a major impact on
social structure too. Unlike the richer farmers, the poorest did not have buffaloes
or cows to help them plough the land. Neither could they hire extra labourers to
work on their land. It was also the custom that before small farmers prepared their
land, they would work first for richer farmers for the additional income. The new
regulation prevented them from earning this income. As a result, they had to rent
their land to richer farmers and become tenants on their own land, with the result-
ing loss of social status in the community. One January, this village was featured
on national television news as 60 people had been found suffering from severe
malnutrition. According to the village head, most of these were landless and small
farmers (Soetrisno, 1982).
The decline of the traditional sawah system of rice production in Bali is an
example of what can happen when a sustainable system is changed (Poffenberger
and Zurbuchen, 1980). It was self-sufficient within the boundaries of a single
watercourse. Complex social, ecological and economic linkages made the system
sustainable and resilient for at least 1100 years. But, over just a few years, rice mod-
ernization broke apart these local relationships by substituting external processes.
Pesticides replaced predators, and fertilizers replaced cattle and traditional land man-
agement. Government officials made decisions rather than local institutions, and
local labour groups were replaced with specialist workers and tractors (Box 1.2).
Wheat and pastoralists in Tanzania
Another example of the social damage caused by modern farming comes from
Tanzania, where millions of dollars of Canadian aid were spent between 1969 and
1993 in developing wheat farms on the dry Basotu Plains. Yields were comparable
with those on the Canadian plains and the farms came to supply nearly half of the
national wheat demand. But the plains are also the homeland of some 30–50,000
Barabaig pastoralists. The impact on their lives of these wheat farms has been
recorded at first hand and documented in depth by Charles Lane (Lane, 1990,
1993, 1994).
The Barabaig economy is based on livestock production. Their herds of cattle,
sheep and goats utilize the forage, water and salt licks found scattered throughout