"By God's willing, we can overcome and mitigate all impacts caused by overlapping extreme climate change, El Nino, and drought this year," he affirmed at the Presidential Palace, Jakarta, on Monday.
His ministry is taking several strategic steps, such as the pumping and land optimization program, to anticipate the food crisis.
"Most importantly, our food sector is accelerating and providing a quick solution for pumping and land optimization. Followed by superior seeds, agricultural tools, and machinery. That is a quick solution to overcome the food problem," Sulaiman said.
The Ministry of Agriculture is accelerating rice crop production to ensure adequate food availability and security to anticipate the food crisis.
"All officials and staff at the ministry are working hard in the field to increase our food production," head of the ministry's public relations and public information bureau, Arief Cahyono, said on August 1, 2024.
Rice planting is being accelerated through several efforts, including increasing efficiency, technology, and support for farmers, he noted.
He informed that his ministry is currently pushing to increase rice production in all production centers to achieve food self-sufficiency and make Indonesia the world's food barn.
To face the threat of global hunger, the ministry is taking strategic steps, such as accelerating the planting area expansion program (PAT), returning the allocation of subsidized fertilizers to 9.55 million tons, optimizing the pumping program by installing 62,378 water pumps and 9,904 irrigation pumps.
They further include swamp land optimization on 360 thousand hectares of land, intercropping of dryland rice with oil palm plants on 300 thousand hectares, and providing assistance in the form of rice seeds for 1.9 million hectares and corn seeds for 790 thousand hectares of land.
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Translator: Benardy Ferdiansyah, Resinta Sulistiyandari
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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