"God willing, in less than three years, we will achieve self-sufficient in food again," Sulaiman said when attending the National Food Agency's (Bapanas) Nusantara Food Festival here on Sunday.
Along with various government efforts to continue to expand planting areas and to anticipate long drought, he believes that the country will achieve food independence in the upcoming years.
The government is also striving to boost national productivity through the allocation of 9.5 million tons of subsidized fertilizers.
There are also the distribution of seeds, agricultural machines and tools, and the installation of pumps to irrigate the rice fields by channeling water from rivers that never dry up.
Sulaiman explained, the pumping program includes the use of 20,559 units of pumps daily, which have helped irrigate around 582,528 hectares of rice fields in West Java, Central Java, East Java, and other regions outside Java Island.
"The goal is to channel the river that never dries up to wet the rice fields. The results are real. The president had visited seven areas and asked to speed up the pumping program," he said.
According to him, the pumping program is able to increase the planting frequency up to three times.
Because of the program, the Statistics Indonesia (BPS) and the Bapanas projected that Indonesia will have a surplus of 700 thousand tons in the next two months.
By doing so, Sulaiman said, domestic food production can hopefully replace dependence on imports.
"Not only the Agriculture Ministry, but journalists, the State Logistics Agency (Bulog), and Bapanas are also part of the government's success in the food sector," he said.
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Translator: M Harianto, Kenzu
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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