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Why food estates do more harm than good and must end
The government has no answer to the question about whether the value of food estates exceeds or at least equals the loss of forests.
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A fire fighter tries to douse a forest fire in Senunuk village in Kapuas Hulu regency, West Kalimantan, which abuts Malaysia, on Aug. 10. (Antara/Kapuas Hulu Disaster Mitigation Agency)
T
he commemoration of National Nature Conservation Day every Aug. 10 signifies the value of “nature” and “conservation” for Indonesia, home to much of the world’s biodiversity.
In 2020, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Indonesia in the top-10 countries with the largest forest area and the top-three countries with the most tree species.
However, the abundance of Indonesia's forest resources today is still far less than what the country possessed decades ago. Global Forest Watch noted that Indonesia has lost 9.95 million hectares in the last two decades. In 2014, Indonesia even dethroned Brazil as the country with the highest deforestation rate despite the moratorium on forest clearing.
The drivers of deforestation vary, with land use conversion to agricultural and commodity-driven production sitting at the top of the list. Nonetheless, the recent mega-scale agricultural program known as “food estates” has sparked fears about more forest cover loss that Indonesia will suffer in the future.
Looking back at history, food estates are not a new concept. In 1995, then-president Soeharto issued Presidential Decree No. 82, which outlined a 1-million-ha peatland development project (PLG) in Central Kalimantan.
In 2010 the government of then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono established a food estate in Merauke regency, Papua, called the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE). It did not stop there. The government built another food estate in East Kalimantan in 2015. Those projects failed to alleviate food needs; instead they put tremendous pressure on the environment.
Experts have noted that previous food estates failed because the government ignored the scientific principles in their development. At least four essential requirements must be considered, namely land and climate suitability, infrastructure for irrigation and transportation, cultivation and technological feasibility and social and economic feasibility.
