Arable land scarcity haunts East Asia: FAO

Arable land scarcity haunts East Asia: FAO

JAKARTA (JP): The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
warns that Indonesia will face shortages of arable land in the
coming years if it does not take conservation measures. This
warning comes in the wake of a shocking finding that 24 percent
of Indonesia's land has degraded in the last 30 years.

David Sanders, a senior soil conservation official of the
Rome-based organization, said yesterday that Indonesia, like
other countries in East Asia, will likely continue facing land
degradation in the coming years while land scarcity is
increasing.

He made the announcement at the opening of an annual meeting
of the Asia Soil Conservation Network for the Humid Tropics
(Asocon). Asocon was founded in 1993 and studies land problems in
China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New
Guinea, Indonesia, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

He explained that land degradation has been caused mainly by
soil erosion, water logging, salinization, plant nutrient
depletion and chemical pollution.

Director General of Inventory and Forests Titus Sarijanto, who
opened the three-day meeting, said that in the last five years,
13.2 million hectares of land in Indonesia had become barren. He
also said that Indonesian land was being denuded at a rate of
400,000 hectares per year.

The meeting proceeded in Bogor, West Java, yesterday afternoon
after the opening ceremony.

"These (critical) lands have now become unproductive and hence
become a source of erosion, sedimentation and flood problems,"
Sarijanto added.

He noted, however, that during the five year, Repelita V
period, the Indonesian government had launched reforestation and
land rehabilitation programs that covered some 6.8 million
hectares.

Rehabilitation

Sanders said degradation of land in Laos over the past 30
years even reached 50 percent and in Thailand 34 percent.

He explained that land available per person in East Asia is
also decreasing.

"The land available in East Asia will likely continue
decreasing from 0.16 hectare per person in 1990 to 0.10 hectare
by the year 2000," he said.

Sanders, referring to recent research conducted by United
Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), said that water erosion is
the most extensive problem and that no less that 60 percent of
lands in Asia and the Pacific have been affected in the last
three decades.

Sarijanto said agronomists in the Asia-Pacific region should
work together to develop a scheme to overcome the potentially
disastrous situation.

However, Sanders noted that despite decreasing arable land,
Indonesia has made great progress over the last 30 years in
increasing food production.

"The average person is now better fed than he or she was 30
years ago," he said.

Indonesia, which used to be one of the largest rice importers
in the world, became self-sufficient for rice in 1984.

Sander challenged participants of the meeting to consider
whether the international community could continue to increase
agricultural production at a rate similar to the population
growth while the amount of arable land was decreasing.

The meeting, jointly sponsored by FAO and the Ministry of
Forestry, will formulate a framework for actions on land
conservation in the Asia-Pacific region. (09)