TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Greenpeace Indonesia's senior forest campaigner, Syahrul Fitra, said the government’s food estate project is not a solution to the food crisis, but in fact, only exacerbates the climate crisis. He highlighted one of the projects being worked on by the Defense Ministry in Gunung Mas, Central Kalimantan.

“Cassava farm in Gunung Mas is just one of a number of areas converted into large-scale agricultural sites by the government through the food estate program,” Syahrul said in a written statement on Thursday, November 10, 2022.

He explained that the monoculture system not only failed to produce the promised cassava but also set aside the local wisdom and knowledge of the people. While there is a better way with ecological agriculture and traditional agroforestry so that Indonesia has a solution to both the food crisis and the climate crisis.

Dozens of activists from Greenpeace, Palangkaraya LBH or Legal Aid Institute, Save Our Borneo, and the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) of Central Kalimantan held an action against food estate in coincidence with the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. They spread a giant banner reading “Food Estate Feeding Climate Crisis” in the area.

The Central Kalimantan Walhi director, Bayu Herinata, thus urged the government to stop the food estate project, especially when considering the history of similar projects that had failed, such as the million-hectare peatland project (PLG) in the New Order era.

According to Bayu, almost all food estate projects in Indonesia that rely on large-scale development and huge capital continued to fail. Consequently, the destruction of forests and peatlands will generate socio-economic losses.

Not only do impoverish the people, he went on, but the food estate project also drains the state's finances. “Giving land rights and returning food matters to farmers,” Bayu asked the government.

RIANI SANUSI PUTRI

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