Atjeh als rijstland — Atjeh as a rice-country — is Broersma’s phrase for the question whether Atjeh is properly a rice-land, treated at length in the sixteenth essay of Verkenningen in Atjeh. The question is one of the principal economic questions of the early civilian period, and the answer to it is the principal programme of the Atjeh-Instituut’s pamphlet De rijkdom van Atjeh (1923).
The Question
Many readers, Broersma writes, would be surprised if he once asked whether Atjeh is really a rice-land. One has heard of the plain of Pidië and its irrigation-works; one has heard that the Atjehnese gladly is a farmer, that the women here and there take their share in the work; and so there is a current opinion that Atjeh is a true great rice-land and may boast of a rich harvest of grain. Certainly Atjeh is a rice-land only in this sense, that it has a considerable area of rice-lands, that rice-cultivation is the great people’s business, and also that, with the application of some measures and the observance of some cares, it would be an excellent region for rice-growing and would obtain a surplus for which a greedy market would be found in Netherlands-India itself. ‘Atjeh is een rijstland slechts in dezen zin’ — Atjeh is a rice-land only in this sense.
The Yield
It is certain that Atjeh in the yield of padi remains below its capacity, because Netherlands-India as a whole remains below its capacity. If one excepts some regions that Nature particularly favours as rice-lands, then the whole of Netherlands-India brings about as much rice as it itself consumes. There is still always room for a great rice-enterprise that would give Netherlands-India an easy certainty of the availability of enough people’s food, if supply from outside should become impossible.
The Import Figures
According to the available data Atjeh has for many years had a shortage, so that import was necessary for large amounts. From 1904 to and with 1915 there was import of more than 6 million kilograms of rice minimum to more than 13 million kilograms maximum. In a year-report of the agricultural teacher at Koeta Radja over 1920 and 1921 one reads that the import in 1917 amounted to 15 thousand tons, 10 thousand tons in 1918, 5 thousand tons in 1919, in 1920 no import but export of 2 thousand tons, in 1921 export 2.500 tons. What value is to be attached to those figures is not fixed: the information about the origin is lacking.
The Programme of Improvement
Broersma’s own programme, set out in the seventeenth essay of Verkenningen, is the appointment of a real expert on rice-cultivation to act in continuous consultation with a college van kundige hoofden — a college of knowledgeable chiefs — and to begin with the simplest improvements: the provision of suitable seed-padi, the better treatment of the harvest, the construction of loemboengs (village storehouses) for the preservation of seed. The great public-works, like the failed dam at Panté Lhong, are in Broersma’s view the wrong place to begin.
See Also
- Verbetering van het rijstland in Atjeh
- De rijkdom van Atjeh
- Atjeh-Instituut
- Blang
- Tegal
- Sawah
- Ladang
- Wadoek
- Locèng
- Panté Lhong
- Pidië
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- 1904
- 1915
- 1917
- 1918
- 1919
- 1920
- 1921
- 1923
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter XVI, ‘Atjeh als rijstland’, pp. 111–117.
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923); Atjeh Patchouli-Olie, by Ir. W. Spoon (1932), where applicable.