Agrarian Reform Seen as Key to Resolving Land Conflicts and Food Security
Agrarian governance reform is considered an urgent agenda to address various land issues that continue to overshadow national development. Problems ranging from land conflicts, inequality in land ownership, overlapping spatial plans, to the conversion of agricultural land require comprehensive improvement to support food security, create legal certainty, and strengthen investment competitiveness towards Golden Indonesia 2045.
Former Principal Expert Staff to the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN), Budi Suryanto, stated that Indonesia requires a national diagnosis in the agrarian sector to comprehensively map the root of the problems as a basis for formulating more effective policies. According to him, Indonesia needs a national diagnosis of agrarian and land problems to better understand the country’s agrarian issues.
“Many problems are still faced, such as land conflicts, inequality in land ownership, overlapping spatial plans, forest area issues, conversion of agricultural land, and weak data integration and inter-agency coordination,” Budi said in a statement on Sunday, 5 July 2026. He stressed that agrarian governance reform must become a national strategy because land is the main foundation of life, development, and the nation’s civilisation. “History shows that a country’s progress is largely determined by fair and sustainable agrarian governance,” he said.
He explained that land management in Indonesia is based on Article 33 Paragraph (3) of the 1945 Constitution and the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law. However, implementation still needs to be strengthened to answer the challenges of development and evolving social dynamics. “Reform is needed to create legal certainty, strengthen governance, and support sustainable national development. This is so that every agrarian and land problem in Indonesia can be easily resolved,” he explained.
To that end, Budi offered six main agendas for national agrarian reform: reform of agrarian data and information, harmonisation of regulations and legal certainty, agrarian-based economic empowerment, protection of food security and the environment, modernisation of services through digitalisation, and fair resolution of agrarian conflicts. Furthermore, he said that this reform must be implemented through a clear roadmap, starting from data consolidation and legal certainty, to strengthening governance and conflict resolution.