The rice production in East Java is stable despite natural disasters that have caused harvest failures to more than 650 hectares of fields in the province, an official with the provincial Agricultural Agency has said.
Head of the agency's infrastructure division Kusdiriyanto said Tuesday that 658 hectares of the rice plantation in the province had experienced harvest failure, 312 hectares of which were due to prolonged drought while the remaining 346 hectares were due to floods.
Kusdiriyanto, however, assured that the failures would not give significant influence to the province's rice production, which is expected to have a surplus of four tons of rice this year.
"If the average production can reach up to six tons of dry unhusked rice *GKG* per hectare, then prolonged droughts and floods will only cause a loss of 39,480 tons of GKG."
He added that this year's production target was 10.8 million tons of GKG.
Kusdiriyanto also expressed confidence that the target would be successfully met especially because it was expected that there would be no more harvest failures caused by prolonged drought thanks to rains that had started to pour in a number of regions including Malang, Jember and Bondowoso regencies.
He also expressed optimism that the province would be able to produce up to 11.2 million tons of GKG from its 1.8 million hectares of rice fields, 400,000 tons higher than the target set by the central government of 10.8 tons of GKG this year.
As 11.2 millions of GKG equaled 7.5 million tons of rice while the provincial consumption for rice was 3.5 million tons a year, he added, East Java would have a surplus of 4 million tons of rice this year.
Chairman of the communication forum of farmers and fishermen's (KTNA) East Java chapter, Nimanto, said that the high rice production was due to a number of factors.
Among others include the implementation of well-planned planting patterns among farmers, the use of hybrid seedlings, smooth distribution of fertilizers and supports from field monitoring officials that are placed in almost every village in the province.
Meanwhile, according to data from the Central Statistic Agency's (BPS) East Java office, the increase in the rice production in the province was due mostly to the increase of 100,000 hectares or 6.2 percent of fields this year compared to the total rice plantation area of the previous year.
The production realization for January-April, for example, increased by 330,000 tons or 5.8 percent due to an additional 72,830-hectare harvest area.
An increase by 8.3 percent or 290,000 tons of production during May to August was due to an increase in the harvest area by 41,600 hectares, the data said.
The September-December production, however, is predicted to experience a decrease by 2,650 tons due to a decrease in the harvest area of 4,440 hectares, despite the productivity level increasing by 97 kilograms per hectare for the period.
The decrease in the harvest area during the fourth quarter this year reportedly is due to the prolonged drought that has led the farmers to switch from rice to crop plantation.
A cooperation with the forest management company PT Perhutani's East Java branch further accounts for the high production of rice in the province this year.
Through the cooperation the company will add more rice fields of up to 171,000 hectares.
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