Deforestation by farmers has been aggravated rapidly since World War II in Indonesia, triggered by collapse of communities’ traditional forest and land control systems. The notion is popular that it is essential to ensure secure land tenure rights for farmers around forests, and encourage their sedentary farming through introduction of perennial crops for prevention of their forest encroachment. This article addresses impacts of changing farmers’ land control on their forest land use at six Minangkabau villages, West Sumatra. Communities evolved matrilineal and communal land tenure systems by the Minangkabau custom originally for rice growing, by which land must be owned and inherited jointly by women. The custom restricted individual farmers’ exclusive land holding while ensuring equitable resources allocation within a lineage. Although people could acquire new land by moving to unsettled forest areas, lineages or communities themselves held forests and vacant dryland jointly around their villages, which promoted farmers’ land sharing. Moreover, farmers have successfully introduced perennial cash crops on their communal land by separation of land and tree rights.
Nevertheless, farmers’ pressure on forests is not yet alleviated because of their growing preference forexclusive land holding under break down of communal land control systems by recent socio-economic change, though the matrilineal land inheritance remains strong. Consequently, large farmers occupy much favorable land around their villages for their children, which is often left idle, while small farmers are forced to find new land in frontier forests. Tenancy of idle land is extremely difficult for tree crops owing to owner farmers’ exclusive land holding. Behind those problems communities’ ambivalent attitude comes to light toward land control, between “collectivism” stipulated by the persistent custom and “individualism” affected by the modernization. Effective forest conservation will depend largely on creation of new community-based land control mechanisms for equitable resource allocation as well as for individual farmers’ secure land holding.