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Struggling for a job

When Albert told me of how he had tried for five years to find a decent job, he had just returned from Jakarta and was on the run from the police. He had been in a fight with a police officer in a nightclub there, and they were looking for him.

Being Young, Female and Poor

Novita, a 43-year-old woman in rural West Manggarai (Flores), has helped in her parents’ rice field since she was a young girl. Now she is married and still manages the farm while her husband, like many men in the village, travels to do non-agricultural work outside the village.
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Agriculture Regeneration Problem

Apart from productivity and limited land, another problem facing Indonesian agriculture is farmer regeneration. The 2013 agricultural census data shows that more than 80 percent of agricultural business households are aged 35 years and over. In addition, from 2008 to 2012 there was a reduction of more than one million young farmers in Indonesia (Ministry of Agriculture 2015).
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Portrait of the “Glass State”

The Cicadas area was once known as a prone area, a place for drunken, tarok, and slipper makers. There is even its own term to describe the Cicadas area, which is the country of glass.
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Village Survival

Many parties worry about the sustainability of agriculture, especially rice farming. This concern is partly due to the high production costs, the narrowing of paddy fields, and the younger generation who are reluctant to work in the fields because they consider working in the fields to be dirty, unprofitable and demeaning.