Takeshi Ito, Noer Fauzi Rachman and Laksmi A. Savitri (2014) “Power to Make Land Dispossession Acceptable: A Policy Discourse Analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), Papua, Indonesia.” Co-authored with Takeshi Ito, and Laksmi Savitri. Journal of Peasant Studies 41(1):29-50.
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Abstract
The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) in Papua, Indonesia, is a state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels for foreign markets. The project has led to extensive land dispossession, accompanied by devastating social and ecological impacts. This contribution analyzes how discourse regarding food and energy crises has been employed to release land from customary tenure to a coalition of state, corporate and local elite actors. The interests of these actors have converged on the state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels in the name of national food security.
Keywords: state; capital; agrarian environments; land grab; discourse analysis; food and energy estate; Indonesia
The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) was officially launched by Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture on 11 August 2010. According to the Grand Design created by the national government (GoI 2010), this large-scale development of corporate agriculture aims to produce food crops and biofuels for domestic and international markets.[1] The project goals are spectacular and the scale of planned transformation is massive. The MIFEE is expected to increase the production of rice by 1.95 million tons, maize by 2.02 million tons, soybeans by 167 thousand tons, cattle by 64 thousand head, sugar by 2.5 million tons and crude palm oil by 937 thousand tons, thereby reducing net food imports by US$ 514 million (GoI 2010, 39). According to government estimates, the project will also create 44,900 jobs in the agricultural sector for both indigenous people and trans-migrants and increase income by up to US$ 13,500 per household per year (GoI 2010, 39).[2]
The creation of the food estate in Merauke is an integral part of the comprehensive national economic development plan unveiled by President Yudohyono’s administration in May 2011.[3] The Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia Economic Development (known by the Indonesian acronym MP3EI) sees Indonesia becoming one of the 10 major economies in the world by 2025. The master plan divides the Indonesian archipelago into six economic corridors (Figure 1), which are identified as economic centers and are expected to boost economic development by investing 4012 trillion rupiah (US$ 455 billion) in eight strategic programs and 22 main economic activities throughout the country (GoI 2011, 49).[4] Each economic corridor has a specific develop-ment theme based on its potential (Table 1). With the realization of these potentials, Indo-nesia ‘aims to position itself as one of the world’s main food suppliers, as a processing center for agricultural, fishery, and natural resources, as well as a center for global logistics by 2025 or earlier’ (GoI 2011, 16).
Recently, foreign investors have rushed to buy or lease large tracts of land in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America for the production of food crops and bio-fuels for foreign markets in anticipation of food and energy crises (GRAIN 2008, Cotula et al. 2009, Von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009, Zoomers 2010, World Bank 2010, Borras and Franco 2011, Deininger 2011, De Schutter 2011, Hall 2011,Li2011). An emer-ging literature on the so-called land grab has focused primarily on the nature of large-scale land acquisitions as a contemporary enclosure of land for capital accumulation taking place between finance-rich countries of the North and resource-rich countries of the South with multinational corporations and private investor groups as the main actors. This focus, however, obscures a salient feature of the land grab in the era of neoliberal globalization: the role of state actors and their alliances with corporations in creating incentives for agri-cultural investments through regulations, laws and policies (Cotula 2012, White et al. 2012, Wolford et al. 2013).[5]
In this contribution, we argue that while the emerging picture suggests that multina-tional corporations and private investor groups are the primary actors in the global land grab, such private actors are often backed by legal and material support from national and local governments and corporations (Borras and Franco 2011, Cotula et al. 2011, Anseeuw et al. 2012). Besides the use of violence, what is the policy process through which such land dispossession from local smallholders, customary tenure and protected forests is made acceptable? There is an urgent need for detailed research documenting the local processes of the global land grab. This paper addresses this need by focusing on the coalition of interests between various actors including the state, corporate actors and local elites in the case of agricultural expansion in Merauke, a district in Papua pro-vince, Indonesia, bordering Papua New Guinea. A critical analysis shows that national and local political elites in alliance with multinational and Indonesian corporate actors have carefully framed the global food and energy crises into a national development scheme involving large-scale land dispossession.
The frontier is seen as a metaphor for national development (Fold and Hirsch 2009, Hirsch 2009, McCarthy and Cramb 2009), presenting opportunities and enormous potential for the state and capital to expand their territory, control resources and deepen production relations. To agricultural developers, Merauke presents an ideal space for agricultural expansion, with 2.5 million ha of potential arable land, flat terrain and a suitable agro-climate. Yet, often ignored is the fact that the spectacular visions of agricultural develop-ment in Merauke are to occur on land occupied and used by the Malind people and other local/indigenous peoples (Figure 2). One of the main focuses of this contribution is on a question raised by Borras et al.(2011, 212) in the Global Land Grabbing Forum of the Journal of Peasant Studies (Vol. 38, No. 2): ‘How are these [land] deals discursively justified and legitimized, and in turn, challenged and opposed?’
Central to this question, we argue, is the discourse of food security and agricultural development employed by the state in alliance with corporate actors and local elites, that is, the capability of both public and private actors to connect food and energy crises to the concept of a food and energy estate. In this process, the spectacular vision of the MIFEE as an integral part of the Master Plan for national development has been presented in a manner that overshadows the socially unacceptable outcome of land dispossession. On the heels of the food and energy crises of 2007–2008, President Yudhoyono framed the crises as an agribusiness opportunity under the slogan ‘feeding Indonesia, feeding the world’, which was later fully embraced by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (KADIN).[6]
The remainder of this contribution is divided into three main parts. Section 2 employs discourse analysis in examining a coalition of interests among various actors including the state, corporate actors and local elites in the policy process, culminating in land disposses-sion from local smallholders and losses of customary tenure and protected forests in Merauke. It details the policy processes leading to the creation of the MIFEE, including the ways in which the concepts of the corporate agricultural estate and the discourse of food and energy crises have been deployed to make land dispossession acceptable, and the ways in which the large tracts of land have been allocated to corporations. Section 3 examines the ways in which the social and ecological impacts of the MIFEE have prompted local, national and transnational activists to launch counter-hegemonic movements, which have delayed the process of land acquisitions and the achievement of the spectacular goals of the MIFEE. In the conclusion, we argue that the MIFEE case illuminates the ways in which land dispossession was justified and legalized by a coalition of various actors –the state, corporate actors and local elites. Through the discourse of the food and energy crises, the interests of these actors converged on the state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels in the name of food security for national development (Figure 3).
[1] The total targeted area of the MIFEE is 1,282,833 ha, which is expected to be developed in three stages (423,251.3 ha in 2010–2014, 632,504.8 ha in 2015–2019 and 227,076.9 ha in 2020–2030)(BKPRN 2010, 10, GoI 2010, 36).
[2] Currently, Papua province is the least developed of Indonesia’s 33 provinces. The 2009 Human Development Index values for Papua and West Papua were 64.53 and 68.58, which rank them 33rd and 30th, respectively, among the 33 provinces in Indonesia (Statistics Indonesia 2011).
[3] In September 2011, in order to accelerate the implementation of development in Papua, the national government issued Presidential Decree No. 66, creating the Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua (known by the Indonesian acronym UP4B) (Down to Earth 2012, ICTJ-ELHSAM 2012). ICTJ-ELHSAM (2012) reports that the national government sees its support for development in Papua as a way of resolving the long-standing political problems of conflicts between Jakarta and Papua, including the Free Papua Movement (known by the Indonesian acronym OPM).
[4] The expected investment in the Papua-Kepulauan Maluku economic corridor is 622 trillion rupiah (US$ 69 billion) or 15 percent of the total expected investment for the entire project.[5] The active role of the state in large-scale land acquisitions represents a contradiction to the free market rhetoric of neoliberal globalization. As Philip McMichael suggests, the global land grab is understood not as a contemporary enclosure for capital accumulation but as ‘are flex of changing conditions of accumulation’, giving rise to a reordering of international food production, circulation and consumption relations including a relocation of agro-industry from North to South (McMichael 2012, 681–2). In this context, another feature, not examined here, is a relatively new trend of regionalism, i.e. agricultural investments by corporations from emerging economies such as China, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam (Dauvergne and Neville 2009, Ravanera and Gorra 2011, Anseeuw et al. 2012).
[6] Under the public and private partnership, Indonesia plans to be a major global food producer and to raise at least US$ 101.5 billion in the 2010–2014 period from the production of 15 food commodities (Maulia 2010). Ten of the 15 food commodities are identified as ‘strategic’ and ‘key’ commodities: rice, corn, sugar, soybeans, palm oil, tea, coffee, cocoa, tuna and shrimp.
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