'Supertoy' producer rejects hoax claim

Desy Nurhayati and Slamet Susanto ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta, Yogyakarta   |  Sat, 09/06/2008 11:32 AM  |  National

The company responsible for producing and distributing the controversial rice variety Supertoy HL2 is denying reports the development of the new strain was a hoax.

PT Sarana Harapan Indopangan (SHI) said here Friday it would follow up on the issue with farmers in Purworejo, Central Java, who claimed they were cheated by the company after their rice seeds failed to produce.

SHI chief executive officer Iswahyudi said he doubted the second harvest from the 92.6-hectare padi in Grabag village, Purworejo, this month was unsuccessful, noting the first one in April had managed to produce about seven tons of unhusked grain from 103 hectares.

The local farmers earned between Rp 13 million and Rp 16 million per hectare, he added.

"We will find out the causes for the failure. And we will resolve this problem after we get a list of the farmers who planted on the 92.6 hectares. We will meet with them one by one," Iswahyudi said.

"People shouldn't have claimed this failure is because of the Supertoy seeds. There are many other factors in rice farming. This is something we will look into. The point is, we don't want to disappoint the farmers."

Supertoy HL2, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself touted, is now drawing controversy as it might be the latest hoax to plague the presidential office since the Blue Energy alternative fuel scandal earlier this year.

Since 2006, SHI had been developing the Supertoy strain which was invented by Supriyadi, known as Toyong, a villager from Sanden in Bantul regency, Yogyakarta. The company began to plant the seeds on Dec. 12 last year.

Iswahyudi said the company provided seeds, fertilizers and technical assistance for Grabag farmers during the first planting.

The first harvest of the new variety was attended by the President and his wife Ani Yudhoyono on April 17.

"For the second planting, we didn't help out because we thought they could already afford to buy fertilizer and understood the technique, so we thought everything was OK," Iswahyudi said.

He said a similar seed strain had also been planted successfully on a total of 1,000 hectares in several areas in East Java -- Madiun, Madura, Ngawi and Ponorogo -- and in Bali.

Unfortunately, the second harvest in Grabag failed, leading to angry farmers setting fire to their rice fields in protest against the company. They threatened to sue if the firm refused to pay them for damages incurred.

The company is partly owned by Yudhoyono's special advisor Heru Lelono, who also led the pie-in-the-sky Blue Energy project launched by Yudhoyono last year, which later turned out to be a hoax.

When accused of humiliating Yudhoyono twice, Heru said, "I can't say whether the President feels I've deceived him. That's up to the President to say. I would have been fired if I'd really hurt him with the Blue Energy project."

Heru also leads a presidential research team that developed Supertoy, which reportedly could produce 10 tons of rice per harvest, or a two-fold yield compared to other varieties.

Bantul agriculture and forestry office head Edi Suharyanto said Supertoy had been developed in several areas across his regency, but local farmers failed to harvest as much as expected.

"They don't want to plant it again," he said.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.