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Mass-scale farming on peatland detrimental to environment, experts warn
A government plan to create new rice fields in Kalimantan’s peatland wilderness has been met with doubt from experts and farmers who say past experience shows that such a mass-scale project is detrimental to the environment and only small-scale farming on peatland is viable.
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A woman points at dead oil palms in Jambi in February 2018. She wants to grow plants that are more suited to peatland. (JP/Syafrizaldi)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widiodo has recently ordered state-owned companies (BUMN) to make swathes of peatland in Kalimantan available for rice fields to anticipate possible food shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government has yet to work out the details, but the Agriculture Ministry is considering making available 600,000 hectares of peatland in Central Kalimantan to produce buffer stocks.
Another 300,000 ha plot of peatland has been set aside for the project in the province, Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartanto said.
But the plan has met with doubt from experts and farmers, who said past experience had shown that such a mass-scale project was detrimental to the environment and only small-scale farming on peatland was viable.
Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) researcher Dwi Andreas Santosa noted a project to turn 1 million ha of peatland into rice fields in Kalimantan in the 90s, which had resulted in crop failure.
The Rp 3 trillion (around US$203 million today) project was abandoned in 1998, after some 31,000 ha of land had been converted into farmland by 13,500 families moved to the area. The project cost the country an additional Rp 3 trillion for environmental rehabilitation.
Central Kalimantan environmentalists said that conducting another massive project that to turn peatland into farmland would not fare well, because it could also damage nearby ecosystems.
