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)