Page 393 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Ranah Studi Agraria

ticed in recent years. As the demands of water rotation and
pest control become heavier under conditions of intensive
cultivation, farmers have been urged and in some cases obliged
to plant at the same time, and they also now tend to plant a

restricted range of modern varieties with more uniform matu-
ration periods. They thus find themselves not only plowing,
harrowing, hoeing, and planting but also weeding and har-
vesting at the same time as other farmers in the locality i.e.,
facing more uniform, briefer, but higher peaks of labor de-
mand which create short-term labor shortages at the local
level. This interpretation is consistent with the shift to trac-
tors in two villages and increased use of draft cattle in place of
hoeing in four others (even though in three of these hoeing
wages are becoming relatively cheaper than plowing wages,
as we have seen in Table 7.8). The growth in seasonal peaks in
labor demand may result in peculiar problems of adjustment
in labor markets and in the division of labor, as was observed
in Geneng where the highest growth in both preharvest and
harvest wage rates has occurred; at the time of the 1981 resur-
vey fieldwork, when men were busy harvesting one paddy
crop with sickles (having replaced female ani-ani harvesters
some years before), women were for the first time seen hoeing

in the sawah to prepare it in time for the following planting, a
task which has previously been considered exclusively male
in this village and throughout Java.
Whether these increased real wage rates, essentially ano-
malous in conditions of overall labor surplus, will continue or
whether they represent a short-term reflection of changing
labor-demand schedules which employers will find ways to

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