Cassava in Indonesia: a historical re-appraisal of an enigmatic food crop

Around 1900 the future of indigenous agriculture in densely populated Java was widely held to be gloomy. It was widely believed that rural prosperity was declining. The growing import of rice and the increasing share of maize and cassava in the diet of the Javanese were regarded as evidence for the thesis that population growth was outpacing the growth of food supply; Java was believed to be heading for a Malthusian catastrophe. Cassava has long been admonished as an inferior food crop and as poor people's food. The increasing consumption of the tuber after 1900 is still interpreted as an indication of the declining standard of living in Indonesia. The increasing consumption of rice since the 1960s is widely regarded as an indication of a turning tide in living standards. However, not much is actually known about the reasons why farmers took up growing cassava in Java in such a massive way after ca 1900, or about the reasons why cassava consumption increased so rapidly in Indonesia to the extent that cassava products formed a major part of the staple diet, even today. This article addresses these two issues, and therefore the question whether the increasing consumption of cassava after 1900 can be regarded as an indication of decreasing living standards. The argument is largely concentrated on late-colonial Java, although the presented data go up to 1995. Discussion of recent data is useful, because there are considerable discrepancies in the historical documentation of cassava production and consumption in Indonesia. The next section discusses some quantitative facts about cassava production and consumption in Indonesia. The third part discusses the question why indigenous farm households increase the production of cassava, especailly during the formative period 1900-1920. The fourth section concerns the question why there was a continuously increasing demand for cassava and cassava products. The last section explains that cassava was an enigmatic food crop, because the different ways in which it was consumed went unrecorded. This allows us to shed further light on the thesis that increasing cassava consumption has been a sign of decreasing living standards in Indonesia.