Rice production declining by 2% a year in Java

Rice production declining by 2% a year in Java

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah
said yesterday that rice production in Java is declining at a
rate of two percent per annum.

"If this decline is not matched by an increase in production
outside Java, we will have an extremely serious problem on our
hands," he said.

Sjarifudin's comments were made in a speech read by the
Director General of Food and Horticulture Amrin Kahar at a
seminar on the cultivation of tropical fruit and gogo-type rice.

Sjarifudin said Java used to contribute about 60 percent of
the country's rice supplies, adding that "its contribution has
decreased to about 56 percent now."

He said fertile rice fields in Java which use irrigation
techniques had been converted for other uses, such as for
industrial estates and housing.

"Industry, roads and housing should make use of dry land
instead of irrigated rice fields. At the same time, efforts to
plant and expand gogo-type rice in dry areas and unproductive
land outside Java should be intensified," he said.

Amrin said that during the 1983-1993 period, 900,000 hectares
of irrigated rice fields in Java were converted for uses other
than agriculture.

Irrigated rice fields, he said, contribute up to 95 percent of
the country's production and dry fields the remaining five
percent.

Amrin calculated that if one hectare of rice field yields five
tons of unhusked rice per year, at least 4.5 million tons of the
rice production have been lost due to the conversion of fields
for other forms of utilization.

"If a field was one that could be harvested twice a year, the
loss is at least nine million tons of yield per hectare," he
said.

Optimistic

Sjarifudin was optimistic, however, that intensive farming
techniques and favorable weather this year would compensate for
Java's failing productivity.

He was confident that production levels for 1995 would exceed
the estimate of the Central Bureau of Statistics, which has put
unhusked rice production at 48.45 million tons or 3.89 percent
higher than last year's level.

Indonesia, formerly the biggest rice importer in the world,
became self-sufficient in rice in 1984. Until 1993, the country's
rice exports exceeded imports, but since 1994 it has had to rely
partly on imports.

Last year, rice production fell to 46.6 million tons -- the
lowest level in 15 years -- from 48.2 million tons in 1993. The
decline was caused by unfavorable weather and plant diseases.

Sjarifudin said yesterday that the government has launched
extensive programs to prevent last year's situation from
happening again.

Such programs include the use of urea fertilizer tablets on
1.2 million hectares of rice fields in Java, the repair of the
irrigation systems for 150,000 hectares of fields in Java and the
opening up of new rice fields outside Java.

The programs also include planting high-yielding, "gogo"-type
rice in new fields both in Java and outside Java, using the TOT,
or non-tilling, system.

"Planting gogo rice with the TOT system will bring Indonesia
to its second 'green revolution'," Sjarifudin said.

Similarly, the chief of the National Logistics Agency, Beddu
Amang, was also confident that Indonesia would not face food
shortages in the future.

He was quoted by Antara as saying that the cultivation of
large unutilized agricultural areas across the country and the
government's extensive programs would help increase Indonesia's
food supplies.

Beddu was optimistic that Indonesia could regain self-
sufficiency in rice.

"We maintain an 'on-trend' type of self-sufficiency, which
means we import only when we need to and export when our yield
gains a surplus," he said.

He said the recent decline in rice production will be
compensated for in the coming years. (pwn)

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