ABSTRACT
This chapter presents that the drive for increased foreign exchange earnings has tended to make Indonesian policymakers and international donors overlook negative social and environmental consequences of rapid development in shrimp culture. It focuses on field research conducted by the lead author over a nine month period during 1990-1991 in West Java Province, Indonesia. The chapter describes the growth of coastal aquaculture and the set of forces behind this growth. Government policies and international agency support were instrumental in setting the stage for rapid growth, but the dramatic increase in pond production of shrimp is chiefly due to the dynamic nature of Indonesia's private sector. Differing patterns of input use and capital investment in turn affect who can afford to adopt a particular technology and the nature of social relations of production. Extensive production systems typically use slightly modified versions of traditional methods and are also called low-density systems.
