TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesian Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman expressed his optimism that the country will become the world's food barn by 2028. He was determined to convert swamp lands into agricultural land to achieve this goal.

“We will develop swamp lands. Next year, we want to build one million hectares,” Amran said in Central Jakarta on Thursday, Nov. 2.

He said the one hectare of agricultural land will then produce 2.5 million tons of rice as part of the efforts to reduce the commodity imports. He was optimistic that the target would increase over the years so that from 2029 to 2033, Indonesia could be a superpower in the world food barn.

Amran planned to open six million hectares of land for agriculture, with a production target of 80 million tons of rice.

The ministry has started the work and proposed an additional budget to realize the program, he informed. The ministry aims to start planting by November 2023 for harvesting in February 2024 and then planting in December 2023 for harvesting in March 2024.

Earlier, the ministry's director general for food crops, Suwandi, said that Indonesia indeed had great potential for using swamps as agricultural land, such as in South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, and Central Kalimantan. He claimed that his side was proposing an additional budget for this program.

“We’re pushing it,” Suwandi said met at the Ministry of Agriculture office, on Monday, October 30, 2023.

RIANI SANUSI PUTRI

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