You might wonder why we do not have a global farmer’s day. Instead, every nation celebrates its farmers in different ways and times of the year. In Indonesia, we celebrate Hari Tani Nasional or National Farmer Day every 24 September. This date was set by the first president, Soekarno, in the Decree of President Number 169 of 1963. The exact date also coincides with the ratification of Law Number 5 of 1960 concerning Basic Agrarian Regulations (UUPA 1960).
UUPA was formulated to replace the colonial agrarian law with a national one that can benefit many people, with its content aiming national agrarian law as a tool to bring prosperity and justice to the state and farmers, as foundations for unity and simplicity in land law, and as foundations for managing land rights for all Indonesian people
Unfortunately, not all of our farmers nowadays experience prosperity and justice. Although the governments show that the farmer’s trade rate (or NTP, Nilai Tukar Petani) are dominantly rising each year from 2015 to 2021, the field facts show differently. The mentioned indicator is unable to capture different fates of sub-sectors in our agri-food system.
The situation above is only one side of challenges that needs to be addressed to improve the prosperity and justice for farmers. At the same time, many stakeholders also have taken action and made more effort to bring betterment. To make everyone more familiar with our agri-food homework, TJF conducted a social media challenge that encouraged people to learn relevant terminology to support our farmer’s works. In this challenge, we again ask Joni to help the people finding the answers.
After 3-days open submission, we received more than 65 answers from different participants – where most of them are Indonesian youth. Coincides with one of our hidden words above, youth is very relevant in celebrating National Farmers Day. Within the puzzle above, we have ‘regenerasi tani’ or ‘farmers regeneration’ which is the issue that we are also currently fighting for.
Escorting the land reform process and improving the farmers’ access to resources are vital, also to safeguard the fate of the next generation of farmers who will continue to be the backbone of our agri-food system. After all, it is our homework too to define the path of a better future for all.