Page 324 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Landownership Tenancy, and ...

pattern is also indicated with regard to the total area of sawah
leased-out (See also, Appendix-Tables 6.11 and 6.12.).
Linking these data to tenancy status, it appears that the
average area of sawah cultivated by renting arrangements is
the highest amongst other types of contracts both in the group
of sawah owners and also, surprisingly, slightly higher for pure

tenant group (Appendix-Table 6.13.). A likely explanation of
the latter is that-there may be some landless cultivators in-
volved in renting-in who are relatively better off households
with access to cash. Thus, viewing all the data, it may be inter-
preted that sharecropping contracts are characterized by
small sizes of farm cultivated by small landowners, while rent-
ing contract is more or less evenly distributed among house-
holds but with larger sizes of cultivation.
The final point worth noting is when we look at all sawah area
leased out by tenancy status and contract, here again the highest
mean of area leased out is of the renting type of contract, domi-
nantly reflected in all three groups of statuses recorded.
As a final remark of this section, putting together all the
details discussed above, we may conclude that tenancy prac-
tices in itself is indeed an intricate mechanism, which to some
extent also reflects village diversity in Java. It is a subject which
one should treat with care. Secondly, although the data on ten-
ancy rates in this re-census study show that the proportion of

households involved in tenancy-in was not as high as expected
(approximately 28 percent of all households), this mechanism
seems to be related to the efforts of villagers to increase their
wealth (i. e. accumulate income through tenancy) even amongst
landowners, but especially for landless peasants.

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