Page 389 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Ranah Studi Agraria

draft cattle (and the latter’s hired operators) while in Mariuk it
has displaced plowing but made little inroads on hoeing. In
Jatisari, Rowosari, and Kebanggan hoeing has been displaced
not by tractors but by the increased use of draft cattle. A ma-

jor part of the decline in hired labor use, however, is due to the
increased inputs of family labor in most villages. (Here we
should ignore Wanarata, whose temporarily reduced farm
sizes in 1981 have caused an abrupt shift to greater use of
family labor.) This can occur even where farm sizes increase
because of the greater demands of intensified production for
small tasks which (unlike land preparation and transplanting)
do not require mass labor inputs at one time-for example,
fertilizer and pesticide application, crop inspection, and wa-
ter control, all of which can be undertaken by family mem-
bers.
Under these conditions of generally stagnant or declining
demand for hired labor, together with growth in landlessness,
what has happened to wage rates? This issue is rather complex
due to the coexistence in most villages of several forms of
hired labor, each with its own mode of payment. Table 7.9
shows first the changes in real wage rates for casual daily labor
in the main preharvest tasks of plowing/harrowing and hoe-

ing (both male) and transplanting and weeding (the first al-
ways, and the second predominantly, female) and also (co-
lumns 4-6) the wages paid out to harvesters. In the case of the
preharvest wages shown in columns 1-3, we observe a general
trend without exceptions, however hard it may be to explain:
real wage rates have increased in all villages for both male and
female labor and in some cases have even doubled. The method

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