LAND USE CHANGES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL FUNCTIONS OF AGRICULTURE
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Date
2003
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Balai Penelitian Tanah
Abstract
With the current pace of development and ever-increasing population pressure, there is a rapid change in land use from forest to agriculture and from agriculture to industrial and housing areas. In most cases, these changes are irreversible, but the negative impacts on environment could be minimized if land allocation is arranged properly and complied by all stakeholders. We studied, in 2001 and 2002, land use changes and their actual as well as potential impacts. We also evaluated environmental roles of sawah (lowland rice field) in the Citarum River Basin, West Java, using the replacement cost method. The study revealed that for Citarik Sub-watershed in West Java and Kaligarang Watershed in Central Java, areas of forest and mixed (multistrata) cropping have significantly decreased while industrial and housing areas increased with time and these have resulted in a decrease of both watersheds’ water buffering potential in the last few decades. Even though the areas of sawah remain almost unchanged because of development of new sawah areas during the same time period, but the conversion has caused prolonged and more serious Indonesian dependence on imported rice. Sawah system contributes significantly to flood mitigation, conservation of water resources, soil erosion prevention, waste disposal, and heat mitigation. The total replacement cost of environmental services of sawah, for the variables employed in this study, was about 51% of the marketable rice products. This amount could be regarded as a free service contributed by farmers to the surrounding society. Low rice price and profitability in agriculture, relative to that of industrial and service sectors, seems to be the main disincentives for maintaining sawah. Considering the significant environmental services and food security role that sawah can offer and that attainment of a higher level of rice self sufficiency is important for Indonesia, these research results call for formulation of measures to control sawah and other productive land conversion.
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Research Subject Categories::A Agriculture/Pertanian