Verbetering van het rijstland in Atjeh — the improvement of the rice-land in Atjeh — is Broersma’s programme for the improvement of rice-cultivation in the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, set out in the seventeenth essay of Verkenningen in Atjeh as the practical complement to the question ‘Atjeh als rijstland’. The programme is Broersma’s answer to the Atjeh-Instituut’s pamphlet De rijkdom van Atjeh (1923).
The Failure of the Landbouwleeraar
The appointment of an agricultural expert by the Department of Agriculture, stationed at Kota Radja, can be little more than a sham, in Broersma’s view. Sent from Buitenzorg, a stranger to Atjeh, he must acquaint himself with the great land of Atjeh’s principal crops — padi and pepper — to say nothing of others. He must gather information, instruct, organise teaching and lead it. He is again transferred, has had no time to learn the Atjehnese language, and has done his business under a partly justifiable fear of the government that his unpractised contacts with the population might also have a wrong effect. Broersma has nowhere heard a favourable judgement of the agricultural-teachership in Atjeh as an institution: one holds it useless.
The College of Kundige Hoofden
What is necessary, Broersma argues, is that a real expert on rice-cultivation goes to Atjeh to take up the situation in the various afdeelingen with the chiefs; further to deliberate with them and to plan which improvements are first possible — for example, the provision of suitable seed-padi, the better treatment of the harvest. This expert would, as it were, be in continuous consultation with a college van kundige hoofden — a college of knowledgeable chiefs — in order to arrive by degrees at a complete overview of what is necessary and attainable. When one is so far, one can proceed to the instruction of the Inlandse planters by means of compatriots. In whatever way, one must come in this gewest to Inlandse instruction under supervision and with the cooperation of the volkshoofden. Without them one will not get the kampong-people to a proper soil-cultivation, which yet is the beginning of wisdom in rice-cultivation.
The Loemboeng
Without much ceremony it could soon be carried out that, after the first use of suitable seed-padi from the harvest, a quantity is set aside and preserved in a kampong loemboeng (village storehouse) to serve as material for a next planting. Why should not the owners of grounds in a kampong, who have already united their ground in the blang, not also preserve their seed-grain together according to the rules of the art? If one begins in a simple way with the easy changes and they prove to be improvements, the population will acknowledge and value that and gain confidence for new measures of improvement. One can also begin otherwise and on a grand scale by, for example, building irrigation-works with which great sums are involved. The people look at it with awe and some would also earn a day-wage of 60 cents from it, but they do not directly perceive the benefit. One rather hits the mark by beginning from within with small improvements and gradually advancing to the greater.
Significance
The programme of improvement is the principal practical proposal of Verkenningen in Atjeh, and the principal answer of Broersma to the Atjeh-Instituut’s De rijkdom van Atjeh. The programme is the type-case of Broersma’s method: to begin from within, with the chiefs and the small improvements, rather than from without, with the great public-works and the European expert.
See Also
- Atjeh als rijstland
- De rijkdom van Atjeh
- Atjeh-Instituut
- Oeléebalang
- Loemboeng (village storehouse)
- Panté Lhong
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- 1923
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter XVII, ‘De verbetering van het rijstland’, pp. 119–122.
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923); Atjeh Patchouli-Olie, by Ir. W. Spoon (1932), where applicable.