JakartaPost-Oct 7, 2022
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has urged his ministers to scale up the country’s food estate megaproject to boost agricultural productivity, even as technical problems continue to plague the program in its third year. In a press briefing on Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo said he had received orders from the President to “intensify the progress” on food estates in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Maluku and Papua by managing them under a unified strategy. In early 2020, the President announced the creation of the food estate program in response to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the possibility of a global food crisis. The initial plan was to prepare roughly 164,600 hectares (ha) of land in Central Kalimantan for the cultivation of rice and other staple crops. About 30,000 ha of the land was supposed to be readied in the first phase of development. In 2022, the government expanded the program to estates in Sumatra, East Nusa Tenggara, Java, Papua and Maluku. “Fundamentally, do not [just] look at the current progress on the food estates […]. We are trying to intensify land reserves in other regions. Do not forget that potential land in Java has been converted into industrial land,” Syahrul told reporters. In Central Kalimantan, the government is planning to provide around 62,000 ha of land for the food estate program, some 47,000 ha of which is already being cultivated. Syahrul claimed yields from this land had been increased to 4 to 5 tons per ha from below 3 tons per ha before the program started. However, the minister said acidic soil had hampered the growth of some crops and that minerals had been brought in to adjust soil pH levels. In certain areas, tree root systems were removed, making the land more vulnerable to flooding, even if rains were light. “Certainly [our efforts] failed there, but it was not much compared to [the total] 47,000 ha. If [the troubled area was only about] 200 to 300 ha, the President said it was acceptable,” Syahrul continued. Read more at:
https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/10/06/food-estate-program-dubbed-total-failure.html.
