Coffee has been a trade commodity for the mountains of West Sumatra since before the Forced Cultivation System period began. During this period, coffee was not yet considered a highly profitable commodity for farmers, so it was not planted on a massive scale.
The colonial state soon realized the agricultural potential of Sumatra, especially regarding coffee in West Sumatra. The Tanam Paksa system, which made huge profits in Java, became a role model for the Dutch colonial government.
Dutch traders quickly took advantage of the monopolized coffee trade in Java. However, the situation in West Sumatra is very different. The success and progress of trade here occurred without the intervention of the colonial government and private Dutch traders.
They have to compete with other foreign traders, such as the British, Americans and even local traders. The profits made by the colonial government could not be maximized. In this situation, there was no other way but for the colonial government to take over all trade on the West Coast of Sumatra.
In 1834, the colonial government began its quest for coffee in West Sumatra using the Nederlansche Handel-Maatschappij and the concept of “protected prices”.
By 1839, the NHM’s attempts to buy coffee from the interior for the government had failed miserably. They were forced to change strategies to buy coffee on the beach for themselves and compete with other buyers.
Attempts to impose a protected price have failed. Farmers in West Sumatra preferred to sell directly rather than sell to the colonial government at a protected price. As a result, in 1841 and 1842 not a single bule of coffee was bought by the colonial government from farmers in West Sumatra.
From 1838, the Keresidenan in West Sumatra was replaced by a Gubernuran under the Governor Colonel A.V. Michiels.
In the new administration, the colonial government made efforts to find a solution for coffee in West Sumatra. Michiels is of the opinion that the government should be involved in the coffee planting process so that the process of planting expansion occurs.
In his view, to promote forced coffee cultivation, the government had to go into the villages and change the position of Head of Nagari created by the colonial government into an agricultural supervisor with a salary of 5 Gulden per month.
Furthermore, the government should extend this to coffee farming households in a way that each tribal headman should be responsible for the planting of a coffee tree per year by each household in his tribe.
For the deposit of the produce to the colonial administration in Padang, Pariaman, or Air Bangis at a set price of F 12 per pikul and with transportation costs borne by the penghulu.
For every pikul of coffee the government received from a particular tribe, the penghulu received half a gulden in copper.
Then for his supervision of the picking and handling of the beans the penghulu also receives an advance of half the estimated price of the first year’s harvest to finance land clearing: for example, a tribe of 30 families is targeted to plant 3000 trees a year, the first year’s harvest is estimated at fifteen pikuls at F 180, the penghulu will be given an advance of F 90 to prepare the land.
Above the village level, there was supervision by the head of the laras or district head who received an annual fee of 20 cents for each pikul deposited from his district. To a greater extent, Europeans as colonial government officials conducted regular inspections to oversee the cultivation and handling of coffee beans.
To address private buyers, Michielis argued that private coffee traders should be prohibited from buying coffee from the port. This was done so that NHM could buy coffee for the Dutch East Indies government, according to him again the merchant farmers had to be eliminated.
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