- Rice growers from an Indigenous Dayak community in Central Kalimantan province say stricter rules enacted to prevent wildfires have contributed to a decline in the number of farmers growing rice, potentially elevating risks of food insecurity among rural communities on Indonesian Borneo.
- Remie, a 46-year-old from Mantangai subdistrict, said higher input costs have also worsened the business case for growing rice. Many Dayak farmers have migrated in search of alternative work, local officials said.
- “We don’t burn the forest,” the kepala adat, the customary law authority, in Mantangai Hulu village told Mongabay Indonesia.
MANTANGAI, Indonesia — The last time Remie recalled a good harvest season here in Central Kalimantan province was in 2018, when 20-liter bags of rice seed were piled against the walls.
“The house was full back then,” Remie told Mongabay Indonesia. “We packed almost 100 bags of seeds in here.”
Today it is increasingly difficult for Indigenous Dayak farmers like Remie to procure seeds around Mantangai subdistrict, near the banks of the Kapuas River. The price for a 20-l (5.3-gallon) sack of rice seed has bulged to around 300,000 rupiah ($18).
Instead of growing food for his family, Remie now earns a small cash wage from rummaging around the landscape collecting galam, a durable wood from the cajuput tree (Melaleuca cajuputi) used in basic construction.
The 46-year-old says the blame lies mainly with an environmental and public health policy introduced a decade ago by then-President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi.
Between May and October in 2015, an unrelenting dry season fueled by the El Niño climate pattern led to fires on 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) of peatlands and mineral soils. One study estimated that the resulting air pollution blanketing Borneo and Sumatra Islands would lead to 100,000 premature deaths.
In the embers of that 2015 Southeast Asia wildfire crisis, Jokowi drew up Presidential Instruction No. 11 to harden existing rules against the burning of biomass. The policy ignited a police crackdown against smallholder farmers starting fires to clear forests for planting.
However, a large number of farmers were also detained for burning biomass on their fields after harvest, which is traditionally carried out to bring nitrogen back into the soil, among other practical reasons.
Mongabay analysis of court documents published in 2023 showed at least 206 farmers in Indonesian Borneo faced criminal prosecution between 2014 and 2022. A large majority were small-scale farmers operating on 2 hectares (5 acres) or less, nearly all were imprisoned, and dozens received sentences of at least three years behind bars.
Many Indigenous Dayaks here, however, say they believe the fine margins and risks of arrest have made farming unsustainable.
Line of fire
A poster nailed to a stake and affixed with police and disaster agency insignia screams “STOP!!! BURNING FORESTS AND LAND” as workers attend to the adjacent plantation operated by PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri.
In a nearby house in Kalumpang village, customary elder Sanyo, 54 and adorned with traditional tattoos, explained that society had unfairly laid blame for the fires on those practicing the school of farming they had been taught as young people, which revolves around controlled burning and rotation of growing areas.
In 2020, PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri reported a Dayak farmer to police, accusing the young man of causing a fire with a discarded cigarette butt. The fire extended to more than 5,000 square meters (53,800 square feet), including land on the company’s oil palm concession.
Devolved and national laws in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S. and numerous other countries affected by fatal wildfires mandate custodial sentences for convictions of negligence leading to fire damage.
The family pressed Sanyo to help resolve the matter through customary legal avenues. However, Sanyo, the authority on his community’s customary law, had little knowledge of the laws of the state and scrambled to make advocacy contacts in the provincial capital, Palangkaraya.
The farmer received a five-month prison sentence after he was found guilty of negligence under Article 188 of Indonesia’s criminal code.
“In my opinion, it’s always the people they’re happy to sacrifice,” Sanyo said.
Company man
The Dayak farmer Sanyo advocated for in 2020 chose in the end to work for PT Kalimantan Lestari Mandiri on his release from prison.
“People’s livelihoods, especially in Mantangai subdistrict, have disappeared,” Sanyo said. “So, they work for the company, whether they like it or not.”
Others choose to leave their homes and start a new life in urban areas, he explained, while some prefer to disappear into the forest to illegally mine gold.
Alpian, the elected head of Kalumpang, said that around 70% of the village used to grow food. Many have since moved elsewhere because they felt unable to continue farming.
“Since our ancestors’ days, our supermarket has been in the fields,” Sanyo said. “Vegetables, fish … it was all there.”
Muhammad Habibi, coordinator of Save Our Borneo (SOB), an NGO, said residents in Mantangai subdistrict often faced injustices in criminal cases centered around wildfires.
However, fires on industrial plantation concessions occurred more frequently and with greater intensity and damage, he said.
The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s largest environmental nonprofit, has called on the government to revisit rules on Indigenous farming practices.
“Indigenous peoples are often victims of corporate ambitions that exploit natural resources without regard for environmental sustainability and Indigenous rights,” said Janang Firman Palanungkai, campaign manager of Walhi Central Kalimantan.
For as long as anyone can remember, families here held two separate growing areas and shifted cultivation according to rules handed down from one generation to the next.
One area would be planted and cut down for three consecutive harvests. That patch of land would then rest as the second growing area came alive. Dayak communities here have always used fire in this rhythm.
“We don’t burn the forest,” Sanyo said. “If we did it recklessly, then the Borneo forest would be all gone.”
Banner image: A Dayak Ngaju tribe man tries to extinguish fire on burning peatland in Mantangai, Central Kalimantan. Image © Jurnasyanto Sukarno/Greenpeace.
This story was first published here in Indonesian on April 7.
On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
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This story first appeared on Mongabay
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