2018 World Food Day, Indonesia Optimizes Swampland into Agricultural Land

Barito Kuala, MINA – Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman has stated that the use of swamps into productive agricultural land is a new solution to achieve better food security in Indonesia.

This was conveyed by Minister of Agriculture Andi Amran Sulaiman when opening the 2018 World Food Day Commemoration in Barito Kuala, South Kalimantan as quoted from the release of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Public Relations Bureau, Thursday (18/10).

“Optimizing swampland is part of the government’s commitment to stabilizing our food needs by increasing agricultural productivity. In fact, for a bigger vision, namely the world’s food storage in 2045, “Amran said.

Amran’s optimism is not without reason. He assumes that the swamp land in Indonesia is quite large but still underestimated.

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The Ministry of Agriculture data shows that the area of swampland in Indonesia is estimated to reach 34.1 million hectares, consisting of around 20 million hectares of tidal swampland, and more than 13 million hectares of swampland. These lands are spread in 18 provinces or 300 regencies/cities.

From those lands, 9.52 million hectares can be developed for agriculture. This potential is wider than irrigated rice fields which only cover 8.1 million hectares.

Meanwhile, the biggest obstacle of the making swampland in the form of inundation and drought has been overcome by water management and land management technology.

One of the successful swampland conversion efforts is in Musi Banyuasin, South Sumatra. The target is that there will be 4,000 hectares of swampland in South Kalimantan until the end of 2018, which will become productive agricultural land.

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There is the number of challenges such as maintaining water levels are carried out by pumping, as well as liming to overcome high acid levels, and several interventions to accelerate hay infiltration.

The 2018 World Food Day will include the number of events from 18 – 21 October 2018.

“The commemoration of 2018 World Food Day cannot be merely ceremonial, but it must be an important momentum to introduce to the world the advancement of agricultural technology, especially the success of Indonesia in utilizing productive agricultural swamps,” Amran concluded. (T/Sj/RS5)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)