Richtlijnen voor een ontwikkelingsplan voor de Oostkust van Sumatra

Suggestions were made to improve the agricultural situation resulting from the Second World war. The former estate agriculture on the East Coast of Sumatra, established in 1865 by westerners in a sparsely populated and isolated area, occupied 1,000,000 ha in 1940 mainly under tobacco, rubber, oil palms and fibre- plants, but was replaced by foodstuffs during the Japanese occupation, as rice was no longer imported. The Bureau for Land Utilization, established in 1948 in Djakarta, tried to indicate the most efficient integrated use of the land by regional, social, economic and physical planning, in contrast to former incidental actions. An insight was gained into the scope of soil and climate, while some structural defects also came to light of which the chief were the pluralistic structure of society, the legal regulations on tenure, the one-sided production and the presence of cultivated areas as a foreign element, also in a physical sense. The one-sided production appeared from the export of raw materials from estate agriculture and import of manufactured goods and foodstuffs. The area grew only 50 % of its rice. The development plan must increase both individual prosperity and regional economic stability and promote the agricultural industries and service establishments.