Govt struggling to create new paddy fields

Deputy Agriculture Minister Rusman Heriawan said on Monday that the ministry was working well below its target in creating new paddy fields as part of a government effort to produce a 10 million ton rice surplus by 2014.

“It's not that new paddy fields are not being created, but it's just that the progress is still far from what is expected,” he said Monday as quoted by tempo.co.

Rusman said that between 2006 and 2010 the ministry had succeeded in creating 69,102 hectares of new paddy fields, or about 14,000 hectares per year and well below its annual target of 100,000 hectares.

“The target for 2012-2014 of creating 300,000 hectares of new paddy fields will not be merely a dream if regents and their deputies are all in support of it,” he said.

According to Rusman, the 69,102 hectares of new paddy fields that the government created were equal to all the converted paddy fields in Java. Effectively, there were no additional paddy fields added in the last four years.

For a more effective process, Rusman said, regional administrations should record data on land that could be converted to new paddy fields along with irrigation and infrastructure information.