President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo is optimistic that Indonesia can attain food self-sufficiency within three to five years if people work together to meet the agricultural target.

Jokowi made the remarks in his opening address at the third Jakarta Food Security Summit in Jakarta on Thursday. Before delivering his speech, the President met with several farmers and visited exhibition booths.

'€œThe more I learn about what'€™s going on in local areas, the more I understand [the problems] and the more sure I am that we can reach food security, or food self-sufficiency,'€ he said.

Jokowi said he had identified several methods farmers employed to increase productivity and setup cooperatives with other sectors to market their products.

'€œWe can copy such existing examples and broaden [the implementation] nationwide,'€ he added. '€œMy gut says that we can reach [food self-sufficiency] in the next three or four years.'€

According to Franky O. Widjaja, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry'€™s (Kadin) deputy chairman for agrobusiness and food crops, the establishment of cooperatives is designed to bring together the government and the private sector to empower farmers.

'€œWe can implement good agricultural practices, give farmers training and provide them with quality seeding, as well as funding and market access '€” all through cooperatives,'€ Franky said on Thursday.

Franky also cochairs the Partnership for Indonesia'€™s Sustainable Agriculture (PISAgro). The working group, comprising of government, national and global private sectors and international organizations for the empowerment of smallholder farmers, sets an example for how multistakeholder collaborations can be implemented on a national scale, as Jokowi intended.

PISAgro currently works with 83,000 smallholder farmers and aims to expand its outreach to 1 million farmers in three years.

Meanwhile, the Industry Ministry'€™s director general for agroindustry, Panggah Susanto, said cooperatives had proven to work well to empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

'€œIt'€™s good to continue these kinds of partnerships; it now depends on how the industry organizes all of this; from providing guidance to farmers to technology updates,'€ he said.

Panggah said it was important that farmers received such support, because the agricultural sector was Indonesia'€™s future.

According to 2014 data from the ministry, the agriculture industry grew 7.12 percent year-on-year (yoy), contributing 45.84 percent to the nation'€™s GDP.

The sector'€™s trade balance also recorded a surplus last year, as the country exported US$ 35.24 billion and imported $11.33 billion in agricultural products.

The Agriculture Ministry'€™s secretary-general, Hari Priyono, who was on the panel of speakers on the first day seminar, said that it was up to the government to address several crucial areas before it could achieve food security.

He said the government should continue prioritizing development in the infrastructure and services sectors to pave the way for food security.

'€œTo support food security, we need infrastructure. This not only refers to irrigation but also the distribution network. There are far too many agricultural commodities that still rely on a multiplicity of transportation methods to ship out of the production centers because there simply are no roads,'€ Hari told reporters.

On top of that, Hari said, it was important to update the farming system by increasing farmers'€™ access to technology to help boost productivity.

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