This paper provides an overview of food production, supply policies and actual supply in order to understand changes in a significant part of the Indonesian economy during 1940- 1950. It did not pretend to be complete and unequivocal. In fact, the paper establishes gaps in the general knowledge about food supply during this hectic period in Indonesia’s history. Due to the fragmentation of the Indonesian economy during the 1940s it is necessary that further studies will be conducted into the economic circumstances in particular areas during these years. Another blank in the available data is the organisation of rice purchase and distribution in the areas under control of the Republic of Indonesia during 1945-1948. There are ample opportunities for further research. Many sources in the archives mentioned among the references below have not been studied yet, and there are other archives waiting to be explored.
Despite the deficiencies, the paper has indicated that the involvement of the authorities with rice supply has been a continuous process since the 1930s. The colonial government inaugurated food policies for pragmatic reasons. The Japanese authorities turned it into a far more rigorous delivery system and added a rigid distribution system, which was aimed at replacing the free market entirely. The Indonesian Republic took this institutional framework over from the Japanese. The available evidence suggests that the political confusion and insecurity caused insufficient supervision and rampant logistical problems after the Japanese surrender. In reality local ad-hoc policies to meet the demand for rice replaced the in principle integrated delivery and distribution system. The returning colonial government re-established its own pre-war procedures and gradually obtained wider access to food surpluses for distribution. After the full independence in December 1949 the food purchase and distribution systems of the Republican and colonial governments were amalgamated. In 1950 Indonesia had a system of government control over food supply with roots in the colonial, the Japanese and the Republican experience.
The food situation became critical in Java, where the balance between food production and population growth had been delicate before World War II. There was endemic malnutrition, but no sign of prevalent famine. During the Japanese occupation the precarious balance was disturbed and food supply declined rapidly. External circumstances, such as the termination of foreign trade, the Japanese attempts to include Indonesia in the Japanese war economy, and the disruption caused by the Indonesian
revolution are in themselves insufficient arguments to untangle the demise of food production. Specific supply side problems also fail to explain the fall in production. The most important reasons for declining food supply in Java were found in the allocation mechanism on the demand side, in the form of the rigorous measures to control food production and food supply introduced by the Japanese authorities and continued by the government of the Republic of Indonesia.
In itself strict control over the food economy is not a sufficient explanation. Many other countries, including Asian countries such as India and Japan, introduced delivery and distribution systems for the most important food products.193 In most cases these systems contributed significantly to an even distribution of scarce supplies. However, there are two essential differences between these systems in these other countries and in Java. Firstly, on the distribution side they were based on elaborated population administrations. There was nothing of the kind in Indonesia. The Japanese authorities introduced a pyramid-shaped system of neighbourhood groups. But the system was not in place until 1944 and even then it excluded a large number of the landless and unemployed poor. Moreover, unlike Indonesia, in Western countries the percentage of the people in urban areas was much higher. These people depended on the distribution systems and had a vested interest in the efficient organisation of such systems.
Secondly, about 70% of the population in Java had direct access to food supplies, because they produced it themselves. In Western countries the share of people in agriculture was much lower and farm enterprise was more capital intensive. Hence, in order to maintain their standard of living and also meet the depreciation costs of their capital stocks, farmers in Western countries had virtually no choice but to largely comply with the delivery systems, despite the controlled prices they received for their products. In rural Java most farmers were not under any obligation to meet fixed costs. They therefore found it easier to cut back production when the official purchase prices depreciated rapidly. They produced enough to meet their own requirements and the official quota as far as absolutely necessary. On top of that they may have produced a surplus which was much smaller than before the Japanese occupation. Firstly, because a smaller quantity was easier to transport and hide from the authorities. Secondly, the real value of a smaller quantity may have been the same, or even more, than the real value of the pre-war surplus.
This interpretation of the delivery and distribution system allows two conclusions. Firstly, the non-agricultural people who had no direct access to food and who were not adequately serviced through the distribution system, must have suffered the consequences of declining food supplies. Secondly, lower supplies for distribution triggered more stringent control measures on trade. Transport facilities deteriorated rapidly as a result of neglect and the Japanese plunder of railway stocks and motorised road vehicles. Both
immobilised food supplies even further.
To a large extent these are also the reasons which impeded the recovery of food production during the years 1946-1950, albeit that some of the available supplies also failed to reach the deficit areas due to politically motivated obstruction during 1946- 1947. The Dutch military advance during 1947-1949 brought a delivery system to the rice producing areas that provided farmers some protection from the arbitrariness during previous years, and that guaranteed a more realistic compensation for the paddy deliveries. This and the gradual improvement of security and transport facilities explain the steady recovery of rice production.