Talking Indonesia: farming Indonesia with Rebecca Meckelburg

One of the signature campaign promises of the Prabowo Subianto presidency is free lunches and milk for Indonesian school kids. This plan is linked to a much wider set of reforms to the way Indonesia produces and organises its agriculture sector, including the modernization of agriculture and converting land to plantations. The details are still pretty scant but this is not a thought bubble. Food sovereignty is an issue that Prabowo has spent much of his political career touting. Prabowo served as head of the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI) and chairs the advisory board for the Primary Rural Cooperative (Inkud).

As Minister of Defence, Prabowo also led Jokowi’s food estate program, using private sector and military resources to open up massive new cassava plantations in Kalimantan. Those plantations failed. But nonetheless the incoming president is undeterred. Prabowo has called Indonesian farmers true patriots who will lead the country to food sovereignty.

Food security is going to be the signature policy of the Prabowo administration. We all need a primer not just on agriculture, but a sense of how small holder farming has been organised politically, socially and historically.

In this week’s episode, Dr Jacqui Baker chats with Dr Rebecca Meckelburg, a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at Gadjah Mada University, to better understand how big state projects for agricultural transformation impact the lives of ordinary rural communities.

In 2024, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Dr Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University, Tito Ambyo from RMIT, Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre and Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales.

Look out for a new Talking Indonesia podcast every fortnight. Catch up on previous episodes here, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or listen via your favourite podcasting app.