page_title: Agriculture in Indonesia
section_title: Colonial era
hierarchical_section_title: Agriculture in Indonesia / History / Colonial era
context_page_description: Agriculture is one of the key sectors within the Indonesian economy. In the last 50 years, the sector's share in national gross domestic product has decreased considerably, due to the rise of industrialisation and service sector. Nevertheless, for the majority of Indonesian households, farming and plantation remains as a vital income generator. In 2013, the agricultural sector contributed 14.43% to national GDP, a slight decline from 2003's contribution which was 15.19%. In 2012, the agricultural sector provides jobs to approximately 49 million Indonesians, representing 41% of the country's total labor force.
  Currently, approximately 30% of Indonesia's land area is used for agriculture. Indonesian agriculture sector is supervised and regulated by the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture.
  The agricultural sector of Indonesia consists of:
  Large plantations, either owned by state or private companies;
  Smallholder production modes, mostly family owned and run by traditional agricultural households.
context_section_description: Certain endemic Indonesian spices such as nutmeg which is indigenous to the Banda Islands and cloves were highly sought in the West, and prompted the European Age of Exploration. The Portuguese were the earliest Europeans who established their presence in the archipelago by the early 16th century. The Portuguese, through Spanish intermediaries, introduced the New World's products such as chili pepper, maize, papaya, peanuts, potato, tomato, rubber and tobacco into the archipelago's soil.
  The surge of the  global spice trade was what led European traders reach the Indonesian archipelago who were in search for direct sources of valuable spices, at the same time, cut through middlemen in Asia (Arabs and Indian merchants) and in Europe (Italian merchants). By the early 17th century, Dutch East India Company (VOC) began to establish its influence within the archipelago, by building trading offices, warehouses and forts in Amboina and Batavia. By then, VOC monopolized the spice commodity trade, especially pepper and nutmeg, and actively pursued its shares in intra-Asian trades with India and China. VOC further established sugar plantations in Java.
  By the turn of the 19th century, VOC was declared bankrupt and was nationalized by the Dutch as Dutch East Indies. This event officially marked the Dutch colonial period in the archipelago. In the mid-19th century, the Dutch East Indies government implemented cultuurstelsel which required a portion of agricultural production lands to be devoted to export crops. The cultivation system was enforced in Java and other parts of Indonesia by the Dutch colonial government between 1830 and 1870. Indonesian historians refer to it as Tanam Paksa ("Enforcement Planting"). The Dutch introduced numbers of cash crops and commodities to create and establish an economic engine in its colony. Establishment of sugarcane, coffee, tea, tobacco, quinine, rubber and palm oil plantations was also expanded in the colony. 
  During the Dutch East Indies era, the agriculture sector was regulated by the Departement van Landbouw (1905), Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel (1911) and Departement van Ekonomische Zaken (1934).
caption: Nutmeg, for a long time was endemic only in Banda Islands.
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