KEBIJAKAN PENANGGULANGAN KRISIS EKONOMI DAN KONSEKUENSINYA TERHAPAP PELUANG PENINGKATAN PENDAPATAN PETANI

Abstract

Economic crisis and various economic recovery policies issued by government lead to
more dynamic and fluctuative prices of foodstuffs and agricultural inputs since mid 1997.
During the peak period of the crisis food prices at retail market increased at higher rate, about
3 to 25 times of price growth before crisis, particularly for the low price foodstuffs. This
means that the crisis tends to cause higher impact on food consumption of low income
household. To overcome the crisis various trade policies on food and agricultural inputs
issued by government so that the rate of growth of food prices become lower, in other word,
favorable for food consumer. Those policies however were unfavorable for farmer’s income
increase because due to policies on inputs trade the ratio of food prices to inputs prices
decreased with increasing rate. The situation was more difficult for future agriculture
development, which more focused on income increse instead of production increase, because
in addition to unfavorable prices the crisis also lead to increase of number of people involved
in agricultural sector about 3.56 million people or 9.9 persen. In order to support agriculture
development, accordingly, reorientation and reorganisation of food trade policies for rice
particularly is required.