It is a large country with a volatile, multi-ethnic population, held together for decades by authoritarian rule and a strong military. The collapse of this regime provides an opportunity for more open and participatory politics. However, civil unrest, a leadership vacuum and weak political institutions threaten the country's stability and cohesion.

Economic growth and rising labour costs in many regions of Asia have led to the widespread adoption of herbicides in rice production. This trend has been reinforced by the spread of direct seeded rice technologies that require chemical weed control in the early stages of crop growth to prevent substantial yield losses. Herbicide use has been shown to be privately profitable for Asian rice farmers, but the question remains as to whether it is socially profitable when environmental costs, health costs, and the societal costs of labour displacement in some economically stagnant regions are accounted for. This paper analyses the causes and potential environmental, health, and equity consequences of extensive herbicide use in Asian rice systems, and discusses the importance of an integrated weed management strategy for future rice production. Case studies from the Philippines and Indonesia are outlined. The research estimates the extent to which the net benefits of pesticide use is reduced when health costs and the opportunity cost of farmers' time during illness are brought into the analysis. In many Asian countries, herbicides are not used safely and in combination with other weed control practices to minimize labour displacement and environmental and health-related risks. Herbicides are mainly marketed by private chemical companies in most rice-producing areas and are not incorporated consistently into extension recommendations. A successful strategy depends critically on the coordination between public and private sectors in the design of herbicide recommendations and ultimately on the appropriate use of herbicides.

The interaction between real wages and institutional arrangements represents an important equilibrating mechanism that directly affects employment and seasonal incomes for unskilled women in Asia. This article examines recent trends in real wages and employment practices for women in the Javanese rice economy. The evidence indicates that the terms of institutional arrangements, like real wages, have improved with increasing demand for labour off the farm and rising labour productivity in rice production. These improvements have caused the level of women's seasonal incomes from rice production to exceed that which is indicated by the aggregate wage data, and have contributed significantly to the reduction of poverty among women in rural Java.

Rising labour costs and declining terms of trade for rice farmers on Java during the 1980s have encouraged the adoption of labour-saving technologies. This paper uses extensive field survey evidence to illustrate current patterns of labour-displacing technological change in the Javanese rice economy. It presents the recent introduction of pre-emergence herbicides as a potential revolution in labour-saving technologies, comparable to that of small rice mills and sickles. The evidence shows that the growing use of tractors and machine threshers is further reducing labour inputs. These changes will have a profound effect on the role of women in rice agriculture. The paper compares the transition in the Javanese rice economy with that experienced elsewhere in Asia, and shows that the adoption of labour-saving technologies has occurred more slowly on Java than in other countries in the region.

This chapter reviews the complex set of relationships among rice strategies, policy instruments, economic variables, and food policy objectives as they have evolved since the early 1970s. The intent is to provide readers unfamiliar with the recent history of Indonesian rice policy with a summary of rice policy and production performance and to offer already knowledgeable readers an interpretive approach to understanding how strategies, policies, variables, and objectives have fit together. The modest goal, then, is to review the set of policy instruments available to Indonesian decision makers, whereas the more ambitious intention is to interpret these instruments' recent se in the context of food policy objectives.)

This book examines the components of Indonesia's rice policy to help policymakers, analysts, and observers sort out the pros and cons of alternative courses of action. Containing the results of the Food Research Institute's third multiyear research project on Indonesian food policy, the book combines new field-based empirical evidence on rice farming profitability and rural employment and wages with long experience in analyzing Indonesian food policy issues and the international market for rice.