Indonesia to expand agricultural land by 3 million hectares, to become self-sufficient By Reuters

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s incoming president Prabowo Subianto plans to expand food crop planting areas by three million hectares (7.4 million acres) over the next five years to grow staple foods in a campaign to food self-sufficiency, an official said.

Prabowo, who won February’s presidential election by a landslide, pledged to achieve food self-sufficiency within the next four years after taking office on October 20.

Indonesia currently has 7.4 million hectares of agricultural land, down 8.5 percent from 8.08 million hectares in 2015, government data showed, due to land conversion for housing and industrial areas.

Prabowo wants to expand that area by 3 million hectares – about the size of Belgium – to plant rice, corn and soybeans, said Sudaryono, a politician from Prabowo’s Gerindra party who was appointed deputy minister of agriculture in the current government in August to help prepare. for the president-elect’s flagship programs before his inauguration.

“To secure the future (supply) for the coming decades, it is considered necessary to create new rice fields. We are currently planning a total of 3 million hectares of new planting areas,” Sudaryono said at a forum with oil palm farmers this week.

The ministry is currently looking at ways to use the swamps for rice cultivation in the provinces of South Sumatra and Central Kalimantan, as well as in the easternmost region of Papua.

Environmentalists have expressed concern that the expansion of agriculture in places like Papua could lead to deforestation of some of Indonesia’s last pristine rainforests, but Sudaryono said that would not be the case.

“Don’t assume we’re going to clear three million hectares of pristine forests to turn them into rice fields,” he said.

“It’s marshy land that we can manage the drainage… so we can plant rice,” he added.

Indonesia converted about 100,000 hectares of swamps in South Sumatra province into rice fields earlier this year to boost its rice production.

Indonesia’s rice production is estimated at 30.86 million tons this year, which is not enough to meet the total expected demand of 31.21 million tons. Jakarta has approved a rice import quota of 3.6 million tonnes for 2024.

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