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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