S. Sumatra told to maintain rice production

S. Sumatra told to maintain rice production

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto ordered South Sumatra
Governor Ramli Hasan Basri to maintain the province's position as
one of the country's major rice producing areas.

Soeharto told Ramli to convert 360,000 hectares of tidal peat
lands in Musi Banyuasin regency to paddy fields and boost food
production in the province.

Soeharto expressed confidence that the province would prove
capable of becoming the country's rice barn, given that a new dam
was now able to supply water to at least 120,000 hectares of
paddy fields.

Ramli met with Soeharto at the latter's private residence on
Jl. Cendana, Central Jakarta on Thursday.

Minister of Agriculture Justika Sjarifudin Baharsjah, Minister
of Transmigration and Resettlement A.M. Hendro Priyono and
Minister of Public Works Rahmadi Bambang Sumadhijo formally began
the rice harvest in the province in Telang village, Musi
Banyuasin regency, on Thursday.

About 31,000 hectares of paddy field are ripe for harvest
there.

Farmers in the regency mostly come from Java. Each migrant
family receives two hectares of land, 0.25 hectares of which is
devoted to housing and a garden.

Ramli said the government intends to create a further 70,000
hectares of paddy field in the province, enabling it to
distribute an estimated 130,000 tons of rice to other provinces
on an annual basis.

During Thursday's meeting, Ramli informed Soeharto of South
Sumatran farmers hopes that the government would maintain
fertilizer prices at affordable level to Soeharto.

"In my view, fertilizer prices should not be too high. The
President just smiled when I passed on the farmer's message," the
governor explained.

The President has repeatedly said that peat soil could be used
to grow food crops.

The government has an ambitious plan to convert one million
hectares of forest on peat soils in Central Kalimantan into rice
fields.

Last year's prolonged drought and monetary crisis have slowed
progress on the project. Critics of the project have said that
peat soils are inappropriate for growing food crops like rice.

Import

Meanwhile, a group of experts from the Bogor Institute of
Agriculture (IPB) said on Thursday that under the worst of a
series of scenarios which they have devised, assuming lingering
El Nino related drought, Indonesia might need to import up to
nine million tons of rice this year.

In a discussion at The Jakarta Post, the experts said the
staggering imports were necessary to meet the country's per
capita rice consumption of 130 kilograms per person.

The gloomy projection will come true if planting drops this
year and yields are only half the targeted 4.5 tons per hectare.

A total of 4.2 million hectares of paddy have so far been
planted this year, according to the experts.

The experts said that under their "most optimistic scenario,"
where this year's harvest reached 90 percent of the target,
Indonesia would only need to import 4.5 million tons of rice.

"But even under this scenario, we will still suffer a rice
shortage because we only reached 97.6 percent of our target rice
harvest last year," Rizaldi Boer, a climatologist in the IPB
team, said.

Also speaking at the discussion were Suryoadiwibowo, forest
economist Hariadi Kartodihardjo, bionutritionist Hermanu
Triwidodo, climatologist Henny Suharsono, and sociologists Ujang
Sumarwan and Damayanti Buchori.

The Ministry of Agriculture said last month that the country
might have to import up to seven million tons of rice this year
because of widespread crop failure during last year's drought.

The Ministry forecast for the 1998 harvest is 45 million tons
of unhusked rice.

Early this month, Chairman of the State Logistics Agency
(Bulog) Beddu Amang said Bulog expected to purchase two million
tons of rice from Indonesian farmers during the 1998/1999
financial year.

Beddu said Indonesia's rice stocks were currently 2.2 million
tons.

He noted the Japanese government had pledged to donate 500,000
tons of unhusked rice and Thailand had agreed to provide a
further 5,000 tons of rice. Taiwan has pledged 200,000 tons and
Vietnam has arranged to provide 10,000 tons in the form of a
loan.

However, he declined to say how much rice would have to be
imported, saying that it depended upon the coming harvest. The
quantity of rice required to make up the shortfall would become
apparent after August, he added.

Most of the country's farmers plant rice in October, when the
monsoon rains begin, and harvest their crop in February.

However, due to the prolonged dry season last year, many
farmers delayed planting until December. (prb/aan)