ABSTRACT
Indonesia is a vast country, with the distance from west to east being 5,110 km and with about 160 million inhabitants in 1986. The crude rate of natural increase of the population was 2.32 per cent according to the census held in that year. The effects of this population growth were felt foremost on the island of Java. The population of this island grew from about five million people in 1900 to about 100 million people in 1986. The basic effect is the ever-decreasing amount of arable land available per capita. To give an impression of the miniscule landholdings on Java, Table 3.1 shows the arable land available in the province of Java in the year 1959.
