POVERTY REDUCTION POLICY OF SMALL FARMERS AND CULTURERS TOWARDS EXPLPOITATIVE MIDDLERY INTERMEDIATION

The poverty process creates specific rural poverty groups in a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, so that no valid anti-poverty program can apply equally to every time and every region, one of the specific rural poverty community groups created by the poverty process is Small Farmers and Cultivators, the source of their poverty is due to low access to land and capital, the alternatives available to them in the labor market are very small with low wages, precarious work, high unemployment rates, and limited land, so they experience exploitation by middlemen. intensive. The type of research used is descriptive research, the approach used is a case study using the PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) method. In this case, the case study is the search for problems (problem structuring) of the sources and processes behind the poverty of the farming community in Jonggon Kampung Village and the policies that need to be implemented in response to these problems. The research location was conducted in Kutai Kertanegara Regency, East Kalimantan Province, the unit of analysis of this study was at the village level, the determination of the unit of analysis was carried out intentionally according to the research objectives (purposive), namely villages according to the classification of poor villages with a functional group approach of people who are vulnerable to the poverty process. rural areas, namely groups of small farmers and sharecroppers. The results of the study confirm the policies that need to be implemented in productivity of poor farmers in Jonggon Kampung Village, the of increasing the application of appropriate technology, capital assistance and increasing access to marketing as alternative selected policies to be recommended. a Creative Commons


INTRODUCTION
Poverty can be interpreted in two approaches. First, an approach that emphasizes the notion of subsistence, namely subsistence poverty which assumes that poverty is a matter of the inability to obtain the income needed to meet the basic needs of food, clothing and some other basic needs, while the second understanding, poverty is seen as a relative deprivation is a situation where what is expected is incompatible with what is realized (Alkire & Foster, 2011).
In an effort to understand the phenomenon of poverty, Valentine in (Mauro et al., 2018) put forward the theory that poverty is a structural problem. The argument of this theory is that the poor are structurally different from other groups in that they have pathological elements, distortions and incompleteness in life which are segmented into the lower class. All of this is caused by the structural process of a system as a whole, their poverty position is preserved by the system by blocking distribution. resources that can bring them out of poverty, the solution to poverty is done by making radical changes to the structure of society so that their access to the distribution of resources becomes open and easier (Alkire & Santos, 2013).
In many cases the poverty experienced by the community stems from their low access to productive resources such as water, land, employment opportunities, capital/capital, training, education, technology, subsidies, policies that take sides, marketing and environmental carrying capacity (Baulch & Hoddinott, 2000;Eraydin & Taşan-Kok, 2014). Access of the poor to these productive resources must be facilitated to increase productivity. This is important as an effort to bring them out of poverty.
According to (Marris & Rein, 2018) rural community poverty is an integrated concept or integrated poverty which has five dimensions, namely proper poverty, powerlessness, vulnerability to emergency situations, dependency, and isolation both geographically and geographically. socially. In general, the dimensions of poverty are not perfect. Because, not all of the five dimensions of poverty must be experienced by the rural poor in developing countries, that some of these dimensions are experienced and some are not (Gradín et al., 2012).
In an effort to accelerate the rate of regional growth in line with the aspirations of the developing community, taking into account the development of the population, area, economic potential, and the increasing workload and volume of work in the fields of government, development and society through Law No. 47 of 1999 Kutai Regency divided into 3 regencies and 1 city, namely: Kutai Kertanegara Regency, East Kutai Regency, West Kutai Regency and Bontang City.
After the expansion, the concentration of the distribution of the poor population was almost half in Kutai Kertanegara Regency (45.31%), a quarter of which was in East Kutai Regency (24.00%) while in West Kutai it was 15.13% and Bontang City was 15.56%. The data confirms that Kutai Kertanegara Regency has the most serious problem regarding the poverty of its people, because almost half of the poor people live in Kutai Kertanegara Regency which is spread over 18 sub-districts. The number of poor people in Kutai Kertanegara Regency after the division was 54,499 people from the total population of 463,440 people or around 11.76% of the total population, the distribution of the poor population was concentrated in rural areas by 95.6% and in urban areas only 4, 4%.
The concentration of the poor in the rural areas of Kutai Kartanegara Regency is closely related to the development gap between cities and villages (Arwanto, 2022), resulting in a lack of infrastructure, communication, technology, as well as market coverage, education, health, lighting, clean water in rural areas. as the basis for regional development. Due to the lack of potential and village facilities, housing facilities, and environmental facilities, many villages in Kutai Kertanegara Regency are in the category of poor villages, the number of poor villages in Kutai Kertanegara Regency after the division reached 51.6% of the total number of villages.
To find out which rural community groups are vulnerable to the poverty process, the types and processes that create these poor groups can be done by mapping rural functional groups that have a high level of vulnerability to various interventions and policy changes that are specific poor groups (Schroeder et al., 2018;Walker & Day, 2012), this functional group was chosen because it is the group most likely to be modified through various policy alternatives to increase their productivity in order to get out of poverty, the poor group in the discussion of this study are small farmers who own land narrow (0.5-3 Ha) and landless farmers (cultivators). The concentration of functional groups of poor farmers is in Muara Muntai District, Bangun City, Muara Wis, Sebulu, Tenggarong, Loa Kulu, Loa Janan, Sanga-Sanga, with the highest concentration in Loa Kulu District and the unit of analysis taken is Jonggon Kampung Village for mapped poor farmers with land area of 0.5 -3 Ha and farmers without land (cultivators).
This study will provide a policy formulation in an effort to increase the productivity of rural poor farming communities through a rural-specific poor group approach, namely small farmers and sharecroppers in dealing with middlemen who exploit their economy, assuming that the rural poverty situation is not the same, both groups created by the process of poverty, types, and processes that make the community groups of small farmers and cultivators potential to be poor, so that the anti-poverty program provided does not have to be uniform both in number and in treatment.

RESEARCH METHOD
The type of research used is descriptive research, the approach used is a case study using the PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) method (Chambers, 1994). In this case, the case study is the search for problems (problem structuring) of the sources and processes behind the poverty of the farming community in Jonggon Kampung Village, as well as policies that need to be implemented in response to these problems. The location of the research is in Kutai Kertanegara Regency, East Kalimantan Province, which is used as the object of research is the process of making alternative policies in an effort to increase the productivity of poor farming communities in Kutai Kertanegara Regency.
The unit of analysis of this research is at the organizational level, namely the village, the determination of the unit of analysis is carried out intentionally according to

Bambang Arwanto
Poverty Reduction Policy of Small Farmers and Culturers Towards Explpoitative Middlery Intermediation 1.446 the research objectives (purposive), namely poor villages according to the classification of poor villages, the Presidential Instructions are underdeveloped villages which are approached based on functional groups of people who are vulnerable to the poverty process, namely farmer groups, so that the unit of analysis for the poor agricultural village, namely Jonggon Kampung, was chosen from the sub-district of farmer concentration, namely Loa Kulu District.

The Poverty Situation of Jonggon Kampung Village
Jonggon Kampung village is an analytical unit that is taken as an example of a poor agricultural village in Kutai Kertanegara Regency, has an area of ± 39,253 Ha, an average rainfall of 300-4500 mm/year, has a height of 400-800 M with a limit of 400-800 m above sea level. -The boundaries of the area are as follows: North side: Jonggon Jaya Village, South side: Penajam District (Sand District) West side: ITCI HPH area (Sand Regency) East side: Sei Payang Village The distance of Jonggon Kampung Village from the center of Loa Kulu District is 62 Km or within 3 hours of traveling by land, with poor road conditions. In the rainy season, the location of Jonggon Kampung Village can only be reached by foot, because most of the road is a dirt road without paving and overgrown with shrubs. Jonggon Kampung Village does not have health facilities such as Puskesmas or Sub Health Center, does not have health workers who live in the village, does not have health facilities. means of communication, does not have lighting / electricity / Diesel facilities, the only educational facilities available are elementary schools.
To clarify the poverty situation of Jonggon Kampung Village, the table below will show the poverty characteristics of Jonggon Kampung Village as follows: Educational facilities SD (1 piece) 7 Health Facilities There isn't any 8 Health workers who live in the village There isn't any 9 Where to communicate There isn't any 10 village market Traditional (1 piece) 11 Population density 2.5 people/km2 12 Source of clean water River/well (brown) 13 Bridge River/stem latrine 14 Lighting There isn't any 15 Resident transport No regular transportation Source: Primary data analysis

Eduvest -Journal of Universal Studies
Volume 2 Number 8, August 2022 The livelihood of the Jonggon Kampung community in general is very dependent on the primary sector, namely agriculture, because of the existing 153 family heads (707 people), 104 family heads are farming families (408 people) or 68% of the total population of Jonggon Kampung Village are farmers.
As revealed by (Mazvimavi et al., 2012;Muzari et al., 2012;Veysset et al., 2011) in understanding rural poverty, the farming community of Jonggon Kampung Village also experiences various dimensions of poverty in the form of property poverty, which is indicated by the situation of housing made of low-quality materials (nipah boards and leaves), household utensils that are minimal, do not have water facilities, washing, own latrines (river latrines), the family economy is based on a debt economy, and their income tends to decrease because rice production which is their mainstay product has also decreased by 27.5% per year.
The next dimension of poverty can be seen from physical weakness caused by a high dependency ratio between family members and healthy adult family members in earning a living, this is reflected in the number of young farmers who turn to wood workers by abandoning their potential fields, resulting in dependent family members (wife, children, and other relatives) who initially depended on the farming business managed by the young farmers became farm laborers in the fields of their neighbors.
The third dimension of poverty can be seen from the isolation in the form of geographical isolation of the farming community of Jonggon Kampung, due to the absence of adequate transportation facilities and poor road access, so that they have difficulty obtaining various information on agricultural technology and markets. This isolation factor causes the next dimension of poverty in the form of the powerlessness of farmers to the dominance of highly exploitative middlemen/brokers, isolation which results in their low access to competitive markets and market information (due to the lack of rural facilities and infrastructure including economic facilities) making them very vulnerable to falling rice prices, rising prices of fertilizers and medicines and the threat of crop failure. This makes them always have to keep in touch with middlemen/pengijon through capital loans or to borrow in an effort to cover the necessities of life in times of famine with interest reaching 20% -30% which is paid at harvest.
The type of poverty of the farming community of Jonggon Kampung Village is endemic poverty, because it is a combination of various factors, namely isolation (lack of rural facilities and infrastructure), alienation of agricultural technology, dependence on the middlemen's economy and lack of productive assets.

Sources and processes of poverty for farmers in Jonggon Kampung
The meta-problem of the problematic situation of poverty in the farming community of Jonggon Kampung Village is the low income of farmers originating from a substantive problem, namely a decrease in rice production and low rice yields per hectare (productivity).
The average yield per hectare in the last five years, the rice production of farmers in Jonggon kampung is also low, only 20 quintals per hectare per year and the low yield per hectare comes from factors compared to rice production in surrounding villages such as Jonggon Jaya Village which can reach 38 quintals per hectare, and Margahayu Village which achieves yields per hectare up to 42 quintals. When identified the decline in rice production by 27.5% the causes of the problem are: The economic dominance of middlemen towards harvests in Jonggon Kampung Village has increased in the last 5 years, this is due to other market players such as KUD (which is located in Loa Kulu District), namely; Sumber Rahayu, Tani Makmur, Aneka Usaha, Warga Sejahtera, Budi Luhur, Sei Kapur do not have sufficient capital to buy rice, other competitive market players are not found because the location is difficult to reach. The surge in the number of middlemen usually occurs when the price of rice falls after the harvest.

Low Access to Technology
Technology in this case is defined as ways related to skills in the industrial sector that are applied with the aim of increasing productivity, for example mechanization tools are more productive than traditional agricultural tools (Cabraal et al., 2005;Mustanir & Lubis, 2017). The agricultural mechanization program apparently has not touched the farmers of Jonggon Kampung Village, in general they work on the rice fields with simple tools, the land cultivation that they usually do using a hand tractor is obtained by renting from middlemen/pengijon traders, and even then for farmers who get their turn in rent in The waiting period is quite long and they have to cultivate their land in the traditional way (plows and hoes), because when they wait for the hand tractor they are worried that the rice seeds that have been sown will be too old to be planted, besides that the farmers are also not familiar with seed technology, medicine and fertilizers. They only receive what has been supplied by middlemen, the low access to technology can be seen in the following

Low Access to Capital
Capital is an essential element in increasing farming, lack of capital greatly limits activities and business space. Farming capital obtained from community loans is limited to lending and borrowing transactions with the aim of helping each other, but in an effort to cultivate rice fields with large enough funding, they are generally trapped in a bonded labor system with fairly large interest rates (20-30%).
Access to capital from credit institutions that have been given is only in the form of Farm Business Credit. and even then it only reached 17% of the number of farmers who really needed it and they got it only in one planting season (in 1995) with the obligation to pay off within 7 months and with a credit interest of 14%, after the KUT payment they never received assistance farming capital again, in addition to KUT capital as well. they have received through a revolving fund for the Inpres Desa Disadvantaged program. However, the revolving fund is too small to support their farming business, the revolving fund is used for chicken and duck farming but on average it fails because there is no assistance and guidance in managing the fund. The access to capital for farming in Jonggon Kampung Village can be seen in the following graph:

Government Program for Poverty Reduction of Farmers in Jonggon Kampung
The government's response to the poverty situation of the people of Jonggon Kampung Village is very low. This can be proven by the absence of programs that are relevant to the problems faced by the poor farming community of Jonggon Kampung Village, the complexity of the problems faced, for example, the low ability of farming capital, low technological ability, low marketing ability which results in decreased production and low productivity. which in turn causes them to become a potentially poor society.
The physical and geographical isolation they face in the form of poor rural road facilities (11 km) has not yet been touched by government improvements, regular rural transportation that can break the isolation of Jonggon Kampung Village has also not been implemented, although the application of agricultural mechanization has been intensely implemented in Loa Kulu sub-district since in 1993, but until now the increase in farmers' technological knowledge through agricultural mechanization programs in Jonggon Kampung Village has not received attention. In addition, efforts to strengthen rural economic institutions such as the formation of KUD or strengthening KUD capital around Jonggon Kampung Village in an effort to help market the agricultural products of farmers in Jonggon Kampung Village were also not realized.
The program that has been implemented by the government in its relevance to the problems faced by farmers is only the provision of KUT in 1995 which is the first and last credit program for farmers because the program has stopped for farmers in Jonggon Kampung since 1996. Subsidized capital assistance program that has been rolled out through IDT since 1993 the amount is relatively small to support the farming business

Poverty Reduction Policy of Small Farmers and Culturers Towards Explpoitative Middlery Intermediation 1.450
(divided into 10 pokmas capital). For this reason, efforts were made for other productive activities, namely chicken and duck farming, but failed due to the absence of assistance and guidance.

Weaknesses of Government Programs in Reducing Farmer Poverty
Externally the program, the capital assistance provided by the government through subsidized credit, both Kerdit Usaha Tani (KUT) and Inpres Disadvantaged Villages (IDT) have relevance to the problems faced by farmers. However, given the complexity of the problems faced by the farmers of Jonggon Kampung Village, the capital assistance program alone will certainly not be able to bring the farming community out of the circle of problems without synergizing it with other programs such as technology and marketing of agricultural products, in addition to considering the quantity of good capital. in terms of quantity and scope, it has not been able to meet the capital capacity of farming businesses Internally, the program provides KUT assistance to be ineffective for the farming community of Jonggon Kampung Village because the KUT procedures and mechanisms themselves must go through a submission at the KUD level and become a KUD member first, while Jonggon Kampung Village does not yet have a KUD. seen in the following image: The absence of KUD in Jonggon Kampung Village can actually be supported by the presence of other KUDs around the village, for example the Prosperous Citizens KUD in Margahayu Village which has facilitated the provision of KUT to residents of Jonggon Kampung Village even though in fact they are not members of the Prosperous Citizens KUD, but because of the many government programs that piggyback on the KUD such as distribution of medicinal fertilizers, production inputs as well as marketing of agricultural products as well as credit distribution, while it is well understood that the managerial and technical capabilities of KUD administration are very weak plus a wide scope of work, making the prosperous community KUD limit the scope of work to only Margahayu Village, Thus, Jonggon Kampung Village has closed its access to capital services However, with the many tasks that are piggybacking on the economic role of the KUD with limited management resources, and the lack of guidance, the performance of the Village Unit Cooperatives in the Loa Kulu sub-district generally suffers from a lack of funding, this is clearly shown in Figure 2 where there is a decline in the role of cooperatives as partners. buyers of farmers' crops, one of the reasons for the decline. KUD's capital is due to the large number of credit arrears, this is also due to the absence of guidance and assistance in the use of credit other than credit interest, which is around 14%, which is still considered large enough to be applied to poor farmers (compare with soft loan interest of 2.5% -5% in the low-income group) weak economy by BPD NTB). Cases of misuse of capital assistance originating from the government are not only in the KUT program, this is also common in IDT funding, so to anticipate it, assistance and guidance are needed on the use of these credit funds (Sarman and Sayogyo, 2000: 51-57) to avoid arrears. credit by the poor because their status is not bank-worthy, coaching and mentoring really need to be done.
the handling of the problems of Jonggon Kampung farmers through capital assistance (KUT and IDT) did not work effectively, because the access of the Jonggon Kampung farmer community to credit that had easy conditions, low interest, simple procedures, fast disbursement, easy-to-reach locations and business technical guidance for use credit has not been received.

Problem Structuring with Hierarchical Techniques for Policy Alternatives
To specify the problem from the substantive problem of decreasing production and low rice yields per hectare (productivity) of the farmers of Jonggon Kampung Village into a formal problem which is also a policy goal, the following will use a hierarchical problemfinding technique in the form of a problem diagram structure as shown below: After the problem specification is carried out, then an analysis of the desired conditions in the analysis of objectives is carried out, the analysis of the objectives is carried out by changing the conditions in the problem analysis above to the opposite, then testing the relationship between goals that occurs logically, as in the following objective diagram structure: From the objective analysis diagram, it can be explained how the logical relationship between increasing farmers' rice production can be achieved through the achievement of policy objectives for potential land use (idle land), ease of marketing, application of agricultural technology and capital assistance for farmers in Jonggon Kampung Village.
From the causes of the problem it can be predicted the future of the policy (prospective) Forecasting or forecasting is the process of making factual information about the future situation on the basis of information on policy issues, as for the method used in forecasting to determine various alternative policies in increasing rice production in Jonggon Village This village is using Projection Forecasting, which is a method based on extrapolation or past and present trends for forecasting the future.
Projections are carried out with arguments supporting the same parallel cases elsewhere with technical analysis across time and similarities in past and future policy cases, because almost all public policies are aimed at improving conditions in the next 10 -20 years by increasing the positive effects and minimizing the impact. negative effects of policy alternatives (Effendi, 1999).
By using the hierarchical technique of problem formulation, the causes that can be changed/manipulated (actionable causes) have been identified. Based on the causes that can be manipulated (Patton and Sawicki, 1986), alternative policies are formulated to improve future conditions as follows: 1. Alternative policies for controlling functional land depreciation 2. Alternative policies for increasing post-harvest market access 3. Alternative policies for applying appropriate technology 4. Alternative policies for capital assistance The second step used to recommend policy alternatives is to test through several criteria through the comparison method of criteria equivalent to the equivalent alternative method, which is a method that considers all criteria the same and sees how far the tradeoffs that occur in the selected alternative when the criteria are equated, then carried out. scoring to find the highest weight value. The criteria and assessment of each policy alternative can be seen in Appendix 1-10, with a score of 1 which means it cannot be applied, a score of 2 which means less effective, and a score of 3 which is quite effective. a score of 4 means very effective. The results of the assessment are then recapitulated in the following score table: Source: Primary data analysis Based on this scoring, the following ranking of policy alternatives can be generated: a) Rank I is an alternative policy to increase access to marketing with a score of 23 or has a score of 23:6 = 3.8 (close to a score of 4) which means it is very effective to be applied. b) Rank II is an alternative capital assistance policy for farmers with a score of 21 or a criterion weight of 3.5 (21:6) which means it is effective to be implemented.

Bambang Arwanto
Poverty Reduction Policy of Small Farmers and Culturers Towards Explpoitative Middlery Intermediation 1.454 c) Rank III is an alternative policy to increase the application of appropriate technology with a score of 18 or a weight of criteria 3 (18: 6) which means it is quite effective to be applied. d) Rank IV is an alternative policy for controlling functional land depreciation with a score of 14 or a criterion weight of 2,3 (14:6) which means it is less effective to implement.

Results of Analysis of Recommended Policy Alternatives for Farmers in Jonggon Kampung
The policy alternatives recommended for farmers in Jonggon Kampung Village are as follows: The explanation confirms that the recommended alternative policy is a synergistic step in response to the complexity of the problems of the poor farmer village of Jonggon Kampung, the response is to answer the problem according to the specific local characteristics of the village. the variations found in the study are as shown in table 6 below: Decrease in rice production 27.5% per year and low productivity (only 20kw/ha)