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Forecasting inaccuracy slowing down harvests
The lack of accuracy on climate predictions and seasonal weather forecasts has hampered the country’s efforts towards food self-sufficiency, a number of climatology experts have claimed
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he lack of accuracy on climate predictions and seasonal weather forecasts has hampered the country’s efforts towards food self-sufficiency, a number of climatology experts have claimed.
The Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) agriculture expert Yonny Koesmaryono said on Saturday that national climatology centers lacked sufficient equipment to facilitate more accurate forecasting results.
“This has been going on over many years,” he said, adding that this was affecting farmers’ decisions on planting and harvesting seasons.
Yonny said the country’s climate predictions had to be correctly outlined according to regions.
“Planting patterns should be arranged in line with climate data. Agriculture intensification plans should not defy known environmental limitations,” he said.
Yonny acknowledged that regional mapping of variations in agricultural climates in the archipelago was technically difficult to implement.
“The accuracy of climate and seasonal forecasts is very important because natural disasters and drought affect planting seasons,” he said, adding that if regional mapping on agricultural climate could be well implemented, harvest failures due to climate factors would be reduced.
Yonny said the El Nino phenomena, a cyclical change in the atmosphere and ocean of the tropical Pacific region that contributes to long-term droughts recurring every three to eight years, had caused massive damage to agriculture.
El Nino and La Nina are warming and cooling oscillations happening at irregular intervals of between two and seven years with cycles lasting from nine months to two years.
“The damage is even larger than with flood disasters, and spreads to wider Pacific region areas,” he said.
Yonny said the negative impact was larger on crops, like paddy and soybean, rather than on coconuts and cacao, as the growing cycle of agricultural plants were shorter than for plantation crops.
The country became rice self-sufficient last year. It exported 10 million tons of rice in 2008. Previously, Indonesia usually imported about 1 million ton of rice from Thailand or Vietnam annually to meet demand.
However, Mustafa Abubakar, the head of state-owned logistics company Bulog which handles rice, estimated that of the total 12 million hectares of rice farm land in the country, currently no more than 200,000 hectares are dedicated to the production of high-quality rice.
This happens because of farmers’ lack of knowledge of the yields from high-quality rice production.
“They are also less informed on climate change. They don’t understand climate fluctuations that have major impacts on crop quality,” said Yonny, adding that both El Nino and La Nina potentially threatened national food self-sufficiency efforts.
Another agriculture expert from IPB, Herry Suhardiyanto also agreed with Yonny’s suggestions.
He recommended farmers should increasingly use glass-houses and hydroponic methods to help prevent crop failure due to unstable weather patterns.
The glass-house method has been used to protect crops from low temperatures during the rainy season and high temperatures during the dry season by using transparent glass sheets which light can go through.
The hydroponic system provides sufficient water and nutrition for plants suitable for the plants’ needs, Herry said. (nia)
