The Agriculture Ministry has prepared three strategies to maintain the sustainability of Indonesia’s agricultural production as an anticipatory measure in the face of the global food crisis.
“Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo already has new strategies to deal with the global food crisis. There are three strategies, namely first, increasing production capacity through suppressing inflation,” Head of the Agricultural Research and Development Agency of the ministry Fadjry Djufry informed in a written statement received here on Wednesday.
The second strategy involves substituting imported commodities with local plant resources to meet domestic needs, he added. For example, replacing wheat with sorghum.
“We can start planting sorghum as a wheat substitute, or plant sugar palm to replace sugar cane. We will encourage the most possible potential in Indonesia,” he said.
The third strategy, according to Djufry, involves increasing export capacity. Indonesia has several local commodities that enjoy a demand in the international market, such as porang and chimney swift’s nests, he noted.
“There are people that have started this business. The selling value is quite adequate; farmers are interested in developing it,” Djufry said.
In addition to the three strategies, the Ministry of Agriculture is also applying technology in the agricultural sector to support innovations, including the development of rice varieties that are resistant to climate change.
“Through agricultural research and development, we have prepared 216 thousand tons of rice seeds in the past three years. Even in 2021, there were almost 400 thousand tons of rice seeds. This was sufficient to meet the need for seeds for our 10 million hectares of land,” he said.
Meanwhile, a representative of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for Indonesia, Hasil Sembiring, lauded the Indonesian government’s move to implement technology in the agricultural sector.
“If possible, please make healthier products as well. For that, long research is needed,” Sembiring said.
Source: Antara News