Food Consumption, Food Cash Dependency, and Food Policy in Indonesia

138 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999.Perhaps the most surprising discovery was that the vast majority of rural consumers were also very dependent on cash for acquiring food. Most agricultural economists concerned with less developed countries have long assumed that rural households produced most of the food they consumed. This study found that among the 1183 rural households surveyed in Eastern Java, the lowest average percentage purchased of the fourteen categories of food were 70%, 72%, and 76% for fats and oils, vegetables and fruits, respectively. Eighty-eight percent of cereals were purchased and for the remaining ten categories 90 to 100 percent of the foods were purchased in the market. The assumption that people in rural areas in Indonesia produce and consume their own foods may no longer hold. The data from the survey shows that fewer and fewer subsistence farms exist in this area (East Java). The rice price policy which was in existence at the time of the survey may explain the very high proportion of cereals which were purchased. However, further study is needed to determine whether such high proportions of food are purchased by rural households in other parts of Indonesia and in other less developed countries. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD