"We hope ASEAN member countries would agree to increase food reserves in the region which could be used to assure food resilience as well as for stabilizing the price," Indonesian Minister of Agriculture Suswono said after attending the meeting between the ASEAN Economic Community Council and European Union Commissioner for Trade here on Friday.
Suswono said the issue of increasing food reserves was one of the important issues to be discussed at the ASEAN Summit to create sustainable food security.
He said actually the commitment of ASEAN member countries to maintain food security had become a topic of discussion between ASEAN and three other countries, namely Japan, South Korea and China (ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve/APTERR).
Total reserve that has been agreed upon reaches around 878,000 tons with each country responsible to provide certain amount of it.
The three countries outside ASEAN, namely Japan, China and South Korea meanwhile would provide more than 200,000 tons with the rest to be provided by each ASEAN member country.
"Indonesia is responsible for providing around 12,000 tons but we have expressed readiness to provide up to 25,000 tons," he said.
He said ASEAN`s readiness to meet the rice reserve was expected to be one of kind of recommendations to be submitted to the ASEAN summit 2011 and signed at the 33rd AMAF to be held in Jakarta in October 2011.
"President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has given directives that Indonesia as the host of AMAF in October must be able to encourage on how the reserve could be used not only for anticipating climate change but also stabilizing food price," he said.
In meeting the reserve he said each country certainly has a different approach especially with regard to a threat of depleting agricultural land due to conversion like what has happened in Indonesia.
He said Java island alone within three years may lose up to 600,000 hectares of agricultural land to conversion. "This is a serious threat not only here but also in other ASEAN countries," he said.
Therefore, the minister said, efforts to increase rice reserve for food security in ASEAN would not only be made through increasing production but also extending the agricultural land which certainly also requires a budget.
"Each country especially the one with a limited land like Singapore must increase its portion of budget for food. This certainly will be the responsibility not only for the government of each ASEAN member country and not only the ministry of agriculture and forestry," he said. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
