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ndonesia needs special measures if it is to overcome problems in the agricultural sector, as farmable land is decreasing while demand for agricultural products continues to rise, according to an expert suggesting biotechnology as a solution.

The growing population in the world'€™s fourth most populous country, in which over 240 million people live, coupled with an emerging middle class, have boosted food demand in recent years.

Meanwhile, the production side was not supportive of such expansion in demand, said Bogor Agriculture Institute (IPB) management and business graduate program director Arief Daryanto, calling it the main challenge of Indonesia'€™s agriculture sector.

The situation was exacerbated by the fact that agricultural products were also obliged to support biofuel production and feed livestock, on top of providing food, he added.

'€œFarmable land in Indonesia is decreasing annually as it is being converted to non-agricultural land for other purposes such as industry or residential areas,'€ Arief said on Wednesday.

Land owned by agricultural households has decreased by 22.6 percent in the past four years to 10,264 square meters (sq m) on average in 2013 from 13,262 sq m in 2009.

Arief, therefore, called for a breakthrough to boost production so that Indonesia did not have to rely on imported food.

'€œOne of the ways to improve productivity [on limited agricultural land] is by adopting biotechnological farming [especially genetically modified crops], which can also give farmers a better income,'€ he said.

Farmers in the Philippines who have already adopted biotechnological farming, for example, can make a profit of US$135 per hectare during dry season and $125 per hectare in wet season, while corn farmers in Indonesia can only gain $7 per hectare, Arief added.

By adopting biotech corn crops, farmers can boost their production by 14 percent and earn $211 more, according to an IPB study.

Biotechnology involves genetic engineering that manipulates the plant'€™s genes, raising concerns over the suitability of the genetically modified crops for human consumption.

However, several countries have adopted biotechnology as it carries high yields and requires low costs, including US corn and soybeans, which are exported.

'€œWe'€™re importing corn and soybeans from countries that implement biotechnological farming and people can see for themselves that they are perfectly fine even after they consume soybean products such as tofu and tempeh on a daily basis,'€ Arief said.

According to him, 76 percent of imported corn and more than 90 percent of imported soybeans in Indonesia come from countries that approve of biotechnological crops.

The adoption of crop biotechnology by 17.3 million farmers in 2012 has seen farmers receive $117 billion more in income, reduce the use of pesticides by 503 million kilograms and decrease carbon dioxide emissions as they reduced plowing field activities, PG Economics director Graham Brookes said, quoting his research results.

However, the National Development Planning Board'€™s (Bappenas) deputy minister for natural resources and environment, Endah Murniningtyas, said the adoption of biotech farming would need to be further studied in terms of its impact on ecosystems in the country.

Also, she added, farmers might challenge the idea. '€œFarming is a culture. Indonesian farmers are accustomed to reproducing seeds from their own crops, while genetically modified seeds will require them to buy from seed producers, which may then create dependency on the firms,'€ Endah explained. (ask)