Spice crops first attracted Europeans to the East Indies, but the tropical climate and valuable volcanic soils offered a fertile laboratory for the introduction of new commercial crops such as sugar, coffee, and rubber. Large private plantations controlled by European and American interests became the backbone of the colonial economy in the late nineteenth century, when the Dutch colonial government began to limit the practice of tax collection by forced crop cultivation on village land. In 1929, just before the world market collapse in the Great Depression, agricultural products were 75 % of total Netherlands Indies exports, and about one-third of agricultural exports were from small-scale indigenous producers. Although sugar, then the single most valuable export crop, was entirely a plantation crop, a large share of rubber, next in export value to sugar, was supplied by smallholders; and coconut, then the third largest agricultural export, was produced almost exclusively by smallholders.

Smallholders, who owned nearly all of the farm animal in the nation, used their animals for draft power, manure, meat, and for future sale. Most farm animal, including some 16 million goats and sheep, were simply tethered near the home or put out to pasture on communal grazing land. Beef cattle numbered over 10 million in 1989. The water buffalo, the most common draft animal, numbered 3.3 million.Since 1978 the government provided technical assistance to poultry farmers, particularly in or near urban areas. The government also made great efforts to improve the dissemination of superior breeds and modern medicines. Chickens were the fastest growing commercial farm animal, numbering 508 million in 1989, an increase of 65% since 1984.