Land conversion is still a major problem in the agricultural sector in
Indonesia. Land conversation causes agricultural land in Indonesia to shrink,
even less extensive than Thailand which is less populated. In terms of land
ownership per family, it is classified as the lowest in the world, especially
rice fields and plantations. Land size is only 0.03 hectare per capita. “Land
conversion in Indonesia is very alarming”, said Didik J. Rachbini, Chairman for
the institute for Economic Study, research
and development (LP3E) of Indonesia Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(KADIN Indonesia), in Jakarta on Tuesday (June 25).
Didik said that in contrast to ownership of plantation land by large
private companies of foreign corporations. He said that land conversion in
Indonesia has reached 113,000 hectare per year. Quoting data of KADIN, size of
agricultural land Indonesia only reached 7.75 million hectares with a
population of 240 million people. This is only a quarter of land area owned by
Thailand which reached 31.84 million hectares with a population of 61 million
people. An other problem is the slow land clearing or new land opening.
The government, in this case the, in this case the ministry of
agriculture, cannot run the new land opening program. Didik saw that the
development and opening of new land is very slow and difficult to realize and
Rp2 trillion for land clearance by the ministry of agriculture is not
maximized. In Indonesia, there is still a lot of potential land that has not
been functionalized approximately 30 million hectares of potential land could
be used to increase agricultural and plantation productivity.
Many agricultural lands has not been utilized properly. These lands consist
of seasonal upland, annual, swamp and non-swamp wetland. Didik added that of
the total potential land availability, must of them are located in Papua, while
in Java are almost non-available. According to him, increasing the productivity
of the agricultural sector must be by opening land on certain islands.
The local government is also blamed for the lack of availability of
agriculture land for local farmers. The local governments are considered to
provide land more often to large businesses. In fact, the local governments could
share the land properly. For example, several thousand acres for farmers and
other parts to large companies. So far, the central government has been
coordinating with the local government. But in practice, it still happens.
According to him, this policy should be returned to the central government. “We
should not be simply self-sufficient, there should also be a lot of land”. He
said
If the issue of land conversion is not immediately addressed, Indonesia
may become world’s net importer of food. As long as productive land is not
maintained properly, eventually Indonesia should depend on the source of raw
materials form other countries. Actually, Indonesia already has laws on
agricultural land protection, but the conversion of agricultural land to
industrial/residential land continues to occur. So he suggested that there
should be an active role of the local government as stipulated in regional
regulations, especially the regulations on agricultural land protection.
He hopes that the local government can comply with law no. 41/2009 on
protection of agricultural land and plantation. Local government should
immediately establish agricultural land through regional regulation. Currently,
there are many food centre areas, which are supposed to be surplus are starting
to degrade with the placement of sustainable agricultural land only to meet the
needs o its own citizens. (E)
Business News - June 28,2013
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