Page 281 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Ranah Studi Agraria

as a source of income, mainly as a consequence of the harvest
considering with peak prices in chilies.
Perhaps the most important agronomical change since
the baseline study is the more widespread use of improved

varieties on sawah land and together with this, improved wa-
ter control (especially in the two West Java lowland villages)
and widespread use of chemical fertilizers (in many of the vil-
lages purchased more commonly on the open market) on both
sawah and dry land. The “green revolution” was well under-
way in 1976-1977; by 1983 as far as rice is concerned it was
largerly completed in all lowland villages and in the upland
villages new inputs widely used although local varieties pre-
dominated in several. Nevertheless significant yield gains may
still be attained through improved water control in the low-
land West Java villages and especially in Lanjan.
The major development in agricultural technology has been
the introduction of hand tractors in soil cultivation in the three
lowland villages. In the lowland villages tractors owned by vil-
lagers and rented from nearby villages are used primarily in the
second, dry planting season when wage labor is most difficult to
obtain and the cultivation period shortest. In all these villages
approximately 20 percent of all sawah operators reported us-

ing tractors in soil cultivation; moreover, since tractors tended
to be used by the larger land operators, it is most likely that a
considerably higher proportion of sawah land was cultivated
by tractor (especially in Village II where the land is merely
harrowed in the second season). With the spread of high yield-
ing varieties, the sickle is now almost universally used for har-
vest by males, and also by females in all villages.

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