Observer: Presidential Instruction on Irrigation Key to Safeguarding Food Security Against El Niño

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Infrastructure observer from Trisakti University, Yayat Supriatna, stated that the Presidential Instruction (Inpres) on Irrigation is key to safeguarding national food security in the face of El Niño.

“Essentially, the Inpres is a direct instruction, targeting the specific locations where food production centres must be addressed through the development of water resource infrastructure in the context of irrigation development. So, the Inpres is fundamentally an instruction,” Yayat said when contacted by ANTARA in Jakarta on Thursday.

He assessed that the policy is important because the rehabilitation and development of irrigation represent an effort to integrate dams that have already been built with irrigation networks leading to food production centres.

“As we recall, many large-scale dams have already been constructed. The question is to what extent the output from these dam constructions can be optimised and utilised in the food production centres,” he said.

According to Yayat, optimising these dams aims to harness the potential of available water reserves in anticipation of El Niño. The optimisation of dams also needs to involve provincial and regional governments that host food production centres to manage and maintain the water infrastructure.

For context, Minister of Public Works Dody Hanggodo revealed strategies to face the prolonged dry season resulting from El Niño in order to maintain food security. Firstly, Dody mentioned weather modification operations to induce rainfall in the upstream areas of dams, so that rainwater will enter the upstream areas and gradually flow down into the dams.

The Ministry of Public Works is also coordinating with the Ministry of Agriculture to prepare pump-based irrigation systems to water rice fields that can no longer receive water, whether from weirs or dams.

Minister of Agriculture Andi Amran Sulaiman previously guaranteed the stock of rice as a food commodity amidst the threat of drought due to the El Niño phenomenon predicted to occur this year.