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RI braces for drought-related food crisis
Ill-equipped: The National Disaster Mitigation Agencyâs MI 17 helicopter drops a water bomb on a burning forest in the Payung Sekaki subdistrict, Riau, Friday
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Ill-equipped:: The National Disaster Mitigation Agencyâs MI 17 helicopter drops a water bomb on a burning forest in the Payung Sekaki subdistrict, Riau, Friday. The agency only has one such helicopter and relies on traditional methods to control the massive annual forest fires on the Sumatra and Kalimantan islands. (Antara/FB Anggoro) (Antara/FB Anggoro)
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span class="inline inline-center">Ill-equipped: The National Disaster Mitigation Agency's MI 17 helicopter drops a water bomb on a burning forest in the Payung Sekaki subdistrict, Riau, Friday. The agency only has one such helicopter and relies on traditional methods to control the massive annual forest fires on the Sumatra and Kalimantan islands. (Antara/FB Anggoro)
Tens of thousands of hectares (ha) of farmland across the archipelago are on the verge of harvest failure due to the prolonged dry season, hampering President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's target of achieving self sufficiency in national rice production within three years.
In Banyumas, Central Java, at least 3,000 ha of paddy fields are facing harvest failure due to drought in the regency over the past two months.
Banyumas Agriculture Agency head Tjutjun Sunarti said the regency would lose at least 15,000 tons of unhusked rice from the fields should they fail to immediately receive sufficient irrigation.
'Currently, farmers get water by pumping it from rivers around the rice fields. However, if the water source is far away, it is impossible for them to pump water to irrigate their dried fields,' she said, adding that at least 60 ha of paddy fields had so far been confirmed to have experienced harvest failures.
Tjutjun said the parched paddy fields were rain-dependent fields, which could not endure a long dry season. Some of the most-affected areas, according to her, are Purwojati, Kemranjen, Sumpiuh and Jatilawang districts.
Forty-year-old Sartim, a local farmer from Banyumas, said he had to rent a pump for Rp 100,000 (US$7) every day for four days to irrigate his 1-hectare paddy field.
'Apart from letting the crops die, there's nothing else I could do but spend additional money,' he said.
The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has recently warned that the dry season this year could last longer than that of previous years due to the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.
The BMKG predicts that the El Niño effect will extend Indonesia's dry season, which normally takes place between April and September, until November, and affect 18 out of the country's 34 provinces, including North Sumatra, West Java, Central Java, East Java, West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara.
In West Java, one of the country's largest rice-producing regions, El Niño during the dry season is predicted to cause drought that will potentially affect up to 60,000 ha of rice fields, according to the province's Water Resources Management Agency head Eddy M. Nasution.
'The northern part of the province will be the area that is the most affected by the drought. However, it is unlikely that it will be worse than last year,' Eddy said on Friday as quoted by Antara news agency.
Eddy said the impending drought in the province had already been indicated by the continuing decrease in water volume in many rivers in the province.
Indonesia, through the State Logistics Agency (Bulog), imported at least 425,000 tons of rice from Thailand and Vietnam last year.
President Jokowi has pledged that he will lead the country to become self-sufficient in rice production within three years.
Earlier this month, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) estimated that the production of unhusked rice, a leading indicator of farmers' output, will soar by 6.64 percent to 75.5 million tons this year from 70.85 million tons last year.
Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman earlier said the government had been anticipating the irregular weather patterns since early this year by building irrigation channels that spanned over 1 million ha.
He also said that the government was planning to reduce areas affected by crop failure to 10,000 ha this year from the 25,000 ha seen in previous years.
'We know that around 200,000 ha of farmland are prone to drought, and 25,000 ha have faced crop failure. The Agriculture Ministry is making efforts to minimize crop failure due to the drought this year,' he said on Thursday as quoted by Antara.
This year's prolonged dry season has also triggered massive land and forest fires in many areas in the country over the past few weeks.
The BMKG Pekanbaru Station head Sugarin revealed on Friday that 158 hotspots had been detected in seven of Sumatra's 10 provinces, with Riau being the most affected province, with 79 hotspots.
