Prasetyo A., Samudro B. R., Pratama Y. P., Sistriatmaja M. B. Agricultural policy for Indonesia: Stalin’s state gigantism or Bukharin’s cooperative farming // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №2. P. 22-47.

EDN: FYGXRA

Annotation

This article considers the systemic failure of Indonesia’s Food Estate Program (2020–2024) through the analytical lens of the 1920s Soviet agrarian debates between Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin. The study addresses a critical paradox: state agricultural policies continue to fail while Indonesia imports record amounts of rice despite 33 million small farmers. The authors applied a mixed-methods approach and the extended case study to construct an Agricultural Terms of Trade Index to empirically test the Scissors Crisis hypothesis (50 policy documents and fieldwork in three provinces). The key findings are as follows: (1) Food Estate projects scored 4.6/5 based on Stalinist characteristics (gigantism, coercion, ecological disregard), producing only 4,300 tons of rice at a cost of Rp 349 million per ton vs market price of Rp 6 million; (2) Agricultural Terms of Trade worsened by 40% in 2022–2024, making farmers leave the market and increasing rice imports from 444,000 tons (2019) to 3.05 million tons (2024); (3) successful cooperative models demonstrated 2.1–3.1% efficiency and maintained productivity under crisis periods. The study theoretically confirms the applicability of the Bukharinist political economy for the 21st-century agrarian analysis, proving its relevance beyond Soviet historiography, and proposes a three-tier policy roadmap, prioritizing smallholder empowerment, terms-of-trade stabilization, and cooperative industrialization as alternatives to state gigantism and corporate agriculture.

Keywords

Food sovereignty, agricultural policy, terms of trade, cooperatives, Indonesia, Bukharinist critique, land grabbing, peasant studies, food estate, smallholder agriculture, state intervention.  

About the authors

Prasetyo Andri, Lecturer, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Samudro Bhimo Rizky — PhD (Economics), Full Professor, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Pratama Yogi Pasca — PhD (Economics), Associate Professor, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Sistriatmaja Muhammad Bagus, Lecturer, Department of Development Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Jl. Ir. Sutami, 36, Kentingan, Jebres, Surakarta, Central Java 57126.
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Lerman Z., Nikulin A. M. “What surprises me the most is the conviction of so many scientists and politicians in the special importance of large farms” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2022. V.7. №2. P. 158-173.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2022-7-2-158-173

Annotation

In the interview, the famous agricultural economist Zvi Lerman tells about his family roots and trajectories of his biographical path connected with the Far and Middle East. Despite the relatively late start of agrarian research, Zvi Lerman quickly conducted a great number of both empirical and theoretical rural studies of the development and transformation of production cooperatives — from Israeli kibbutzim to Soviet collective farms. For several decades since the 1990s, Zvi Lerman has participated as an expert-economist in the international research projects on post-socialist and post-Soviet agrarian reforms. He considered the features of the study and implementation of agrarian reforms in most post-Soviet republics — Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. Zvi Lerman also considered the peculiarities of agrarian reforms in such countries of Eastern Europe as Hungary, Slovenia and Albania. He believes that the conviction of many scientists and politicians in the exceptional importance and progressiveness of large agricultural enterprises leads to an imbalance in the rural development policy and damages the sustainable rural development by underestimating the potential of small family farms. Zvi Lerman also mentions the paradoxes of limitations in the development of small family units.

Keywords

Russia, China, Israel, post-socialist countries, agrarian reforms, cooperatives, family households, agroholdings.

About the authors

Zvi Lerman, DSc (Economics), Professor Emeretus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 76100, Israel, Rehovot, 12.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy ans Public Administration; Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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