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Food estate program dubbed ‘total failure’ as technical problems persist
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A worker uses a tractor to plow land designated for the food estate program in Tewai Baru, Gunung Mas regency, Central Kalimantan, on March 6, 2021. (Antara/Makna Zaezar)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has urged his ministers to scale up the country’s food estate megaproject to boost agricultural productivity, even as technical problems continue to plague the program in its third year.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo said he had received orders from the President to “intensify the progress” on food estates in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Maluku and Papua by managing them under a unified strategy.
In early 2020, the President announced the creation of the food estate program in response to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the possibility of a global food crisis.
The initial plan was to prepare roughly 164,600 hectares (ha) of land in Central Kalimantan for the cultivation of rice and other staple crops. About 30,000 ha of the land was supposed to be readied in the first phase of development.
In 2022, the government expanded the program to estates in Sumatra, East Nusa Tenggara, Java, Papua and Maluku.
“Fundamentally, do not [just] look at the current progress on the food estates [...]. We are trying to intensify land reserves in other regions. Do not forget that potential land in Java has been converted into industrial land,” Syahrul told reporters.
In Central Kalimantan, the government is planning to provide around 62,000 ha of land for the food estate program, some 47,000 ha of which is already being cultivated. Syahrul claimed yields from this land had been increased to 4 to 5 tonnes per ha from below 3 tonnes per ha before the program started.
