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)