Universitas Indonesia (UI), through the Board of Professors (DGB) held a webinar with the theme “Ketahanan dan Kedaulatan Pangan, Berbagai Permasalahan, dan Usulan Pemikiran,” on Tuesday, July 16. According to DGB UI Secretary, Prof. Dr. drg. Indang Trihandini, M.Kes., this is important in relation to the food crisis being a global phenomenon that the world’s countries have to face, Indonesia included.
“Our nation is a major importer of various food ingredients. There are many research results in the food sector that can help to revitalize modern and scientifically based food security potential. For that, this study is needed to map out necessary actions to solve the problem of food provision in Indonesia,” said Prof. Indang.
This webinar, guided by a Professor of the Faculty of Law, University of Indonesia, Prof. Dr. Sulistyowati Irianto, presented three experts, Prof. Dr. Ir. Dwi Andreas Santosa, MS. and Prof. Dr. Ir. Suryo Wiyono, M.Sc.Agr. from Bogor Agricultural University, and Prof. Subejo, S.P., M.Sc., Ph.D. from Gadjah Mada University. The three discussed various food provision issues and solutions to realize food security in Indonesia.
In this opportunity, Prof. Andreas highlighted the problem of agriculture and the food sector in the last ten years. This problem includes increasing the number of poor farmers; large-scale imports of food for several commodities; a decrease in rice fields by 1 million hectares over 7 years; and a food estate project that violates the four pillars of food land development (land and agroclimate feasibility, infrastructure feasibility, social and economic feasibility, and technological feasibility).
According to him, food sovereignty that improves the welfare of farmers can be taken through the re-orientation of the political economy of food sovereignty, which is small-scale farmer-based agricultural development. For that, the key to sustainable food production is increasing the welfare of farmers and maintaining Java as a food barn, diversification, and productivity.
In addition, Prof. Subejo saw another issue in the agriculture sector, which is land grabbing. Land grabbing is a condition where many rich countries and transnational corporations invest capital to acquire farmland cheaply and on a large scale (millions of hectares). With this land tenure, corporations produce and manage distribution and food prices. This ideology often goes against the idea of food sovereignty, and Prof. Subejo thinks that food sovereignty is not something to be negotiated.
“One example is Singapore, which has been number 1 for food security for many years. Even though they lack rice fields and gardens, with their financial capability, Singapore is able to buy food from worldwide. However, in the times of the pandemic, the market faced difficulty in receiving stocks of goods. Many countries are more concerned about their own stocks than selling them to the international market, so Singapore cannot access food as well as under normal conditions, even though they have a lot of money,” said Prof. Subejo.
At the moment, there are six Indonesian food commodities relying on imports, namely wheat, sugar, salt, soybeans, corn, and garlic. Meanwhile, rice comes from rice fields (95%) and dry land rice (5%), with the majority (55.87%) produced in Java. All Indonesian agricultural efforts are not yet efficient and have higher production costs than the Philippines, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Additionally, Indonesia is also the country with the second largest food loss in the world, namely 300 kilograms/person/year.
Seeing this fact, Prof. Suryo emphasized the importance of building production infrastructure balanced with education for the public. The expansion of planting areas needs to be done while paying attention to the four pillars of food land development. The use of technology is also needed to produce various rice varieties and create an integrated system to save production costs. Education and training must be provided to farmers so that they can adapt to change. In addition, institutional policies are needed to encourage the implementation of agricultural innovation, the creation of central and regional synergy, and the availability of farmer learning houses.
