ABSTRACT
Farmers cultivate wet rice on the flat irrigated land of Kembang in the same way as farmers do in most lowland communities. Some villagers from neighbouring upland communities eventually charter cars to Yogyakarta for trading purposes. Kembang is a local trading centre in which the important level of interaction in trade with neighbouring communities generates locally-based employment. On the policy side, agricultural diversification in Kembang may prove promising due to the relative availability of land in the community, in contrast to communities of the Plain of Bantul where land is very much fragmented and man-land ratios are very high. An important conclusion is that diversification of employment outside of agriculture in Kembang, as in the other studied lowland communities, impacts positively upon the income level of households. Average size of owner-cultivated sawah in Kembang is close to 0.5 ha and is the largest among all studied communities.
