Techniques of Mining and Land Grabbing: Destruction of Agricultural Activities in Kerta Buana Village, East Kalimantan - Indonesia

Abstract

Land grabbing is a big problem in developing countries because a land-large acquisition as an act of land grabbing that made small-farmers had lost their access to the land. The small-farmers as the dwellers in Kerta Buana village who were invaded by the government through transmigration project in 1980 had got negative impacts of the land grabbing. On the one side, some farmers had lost their farm land because it was bought by coal mining companies. They did not have an ability to reject company’s persuasions to take off their lands with some money. On the other side, some other farmers had left their farm lands because they could not cultivate them properly due to the environmental ecosystem surrounding them had already damaged. The presence of two coal mining companies is the main factor in making the farm cultivation unconducive. Through this paper, we would like to explain how the land grabbing by coal mining companies work, and how the method change of coal mining have accelerated the destroy of agriculture activity in Kerta Buana village.