agriculture sector in Padang Barat. The limited and localised ability of strong service and financial sectors in the urban centres to reduce rural poverty concurs
with the thrust of the wider literature which maintains that growth in non- agricultural sectors is less important for poverty reduction than growth in the
agricultural sector Montavlo and Ravallion 2009; Ravallion and Datt, 2002. Specifically, Christiaensen and Demery 2007 demonstrate that the effect of
growth in reducing poverty in Africa is 1.6 to 3 times larger in the agriculture sector compared to growth in other sectors. Significantly, a study examining
pathways out of rural poverty in Indonesia concluded that while employment in the non-farm sector was an important pathway out of poverty, most of the rural
agricultural poor escape poverty while remaining in rural areas, employed in agriculture, rather than through rural to urban migration McCulloch, Weisbrod
and Timmer, 2007. While diverse economic sectors in urban areas in West Sumatra have the potential to boost poverty alleviation efforts locally, these wider
studies confirm that to coherently tackle poverty in the rural areas growth must come from within the agricultural sector.
4.4 Conclusion
This analysis had demonstrated that incidences of poverty amongst households dependent on fishing are increasing despite government interventions.
Within the six districts of West Sumatra included in this analysis incidences of poverty were highest in the district of Pasaman Barat. This is significant because
Pasaman Barat also contained some of the largest and more industrial scale vessels in West Sumatra and hints that modernisation of the fleet may not be the
most effective method of achieving poverty alleviation if there continues to be an inequality between the income of the owner and the crew Elfindri, 2002.
There is no linear correlation between fishing dependency and poverty amongst fishing communities. There are however significant correlations between
total dependency on agriculture and total poverty. Fishing and rice farming are the two sectors with the highest incidences of poverty. Exactly how high this is relates
to incidences of poverty in other sectors and the strength of other economic sectors. Incidences of poverty in the agricultural sector decrease where there is a
stronger wider economy urban areas. Strengthening the wider economy and the development of non-agricultural livelihoods is an important pathway out of
poverty, yet growth in the agricultural and fisheries sector needs to be the first priority in government poverty alleviation policy and programs.
Through the process of compiling the data and interviewing government staff and stakeholders two key obstacles were identified; poor fisheries statistics
and distrust between government agencies. The two indices described above have been developed predominately
based on census data because fishing statistics are so poor. The multi-species and multi-landing sites nature of the fisheries in West Sumatra makes gathering
statistics time consuming and there are not the staff or the funds available to do this. However, because the Indonesian government is currently encouraging
fishers to form groups to access financial capital one of the conditions of receiving aid could be that these groups gather simple statistics that could be used to
calculate catch-per-unit effort for their group members. Group members could record the number of days there are able to fish, the catch weight and the catch
value for that day. In the absence of this kind of monitoring there is a real danger of over-capitalisation as the financial capital of these groups is invariably used to
increasing fishing effort. Despite the census data being designed to enable integration of
government agencies and coherence of interventions around a single data set, various agencies still insist on using their own statistics for their own projects.
Different agencie s do not trust each others’ data and are reluctant to share. The
national poverty census which takes place every 3 years should be the basis on which decisions are made concerning who gets help and who does not. Because
some fishers are migrant workers andor demonstrate occupational multiplicity there will always be a degree of inconsistency between the data set from the
previous year and the reality on the ground. However, that national poverty census needs to be verified and ground truthed by extension officers in conjunction with
community leaders. This would streamline wasted effort, inspire confidence in the data and bring accountability to the development process.
5 DETERMINING ENABLING AND CONSTRAINING FACTORS IN
THE LIVELIHOODS OF POOR FISHERS IN WEST SUMATRA
5.1 Introduction
