Bali News / Bali Travel and Holiday Updates

Rapid growth of tourism sector has proven to shift agriculture aside. Presence of subak – Balinese traditional farming cluster – which has been traditional backbone of Balinese farming for centuries is continuously getting worse. Tourism has never bring any direct contribution to agriculture. The opinion was expressed by the chairman of 4th commission of Bali provincial house of representatives (DPRD Bali), Ketut Kariyasa Adnyana and his colleague member of the same commission Nyoman Laka. “New generation of farmers’ family has no interest in farming anymore. Rivers are abandoned. When rivers dried out, farming will be dead, and at the end tourism will follow”, Kariyasa said.

He admitted that presence of subak in the last decade has been pushed away by transforming function of land. A number of subaks in urban area are nothing more than history. On the other hand, tourism is looking towards farming as an important sector for sustainability of Bali tourism. Terraced lush rice fields offer exotic scenery for forreign visitors.

Unfortunately behind the stream of dollars flowing in from tourists’ pockets, farmers remain suffering in poverty. For this very reason local farmers once put glowing metal sheet along Ayung River which immediately invited protests from visiting tourists in Ubud. In respond to the situation, Bali government allocated financial assistance for subaks in its annual budget. Each subak got 20 million rupiah in 2009, and increase from 15 million in the previous year.

Bali Cultural Office registers presence of 2,345 subaks are scattered around all 9 regencies of Bali, summing up a total of 46 billion in financial assistance in 2009. The assistance was geared to organizational development in Balinese traditional concept of harmonious living called Tri Hita Karana which includes the gods, human, and environment.

Nyoman exposed the fact that the 46 billion spent in assistace was not allocated from tax on hotels and restaurants but from the provincial budget instead. “It immediately means that there is no direct contribution of tourism industry”, he concluded.

In addition to more attention from local government, especially regents, Kariyasa hoped that tourism industry, including travel agents, hotels, and restaurants, to give direct contribution for subak. If necessary he even proposed official regulation to ensure this to happen.