Page 344 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Landownership Tenancy, and ...

may actually overstate the importance of rural economic
transformation. While some households members, especially
among the younger age groups may have shifted out of agri-
culture it is likely that, in predominantly sawah villages which

have taken advantage of new agricultural technology in the
past decade, family income continue to depend mainly on rice
cultivation. We need, as mentioned above, more data to sus-
tain this point but the data do suggest that occupational mul-
tiplicity with farming as a base continues to be much greater
than diversification of major income opportunities, as the stud-
ies of the mid seventies suggest.

F. Conclusion

Taking the sample as a whole, the data reminds us once
again of the three major characteristics of sawah ownership
patterns in Java: on average very small holdings, a high pro-
portion of landless and relatively unequal distribution. Ap-
proximately one third of landless households gained access to
sawah land through tenancy arrangements and just under 25
percent of all sawah owners (the large majority owning less
than 0.375 ha) increased operational holdings through the
tenancy market. Operational holdings were, thus, more evenly
distributed than sawah owned even among owners, and the
net effect of tenancy arrangements was to increase the pro-
portion of households obtaining some income directly from
sawah land by about five percent. Nevertheless parcels of sawah
cultivated were small, on average slightly smaller than owner
operated plots, and the large majority distributed through
share cropping arrangements.

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