Food sovereignty in Indonesia would be impossible if farmers are not educated and/or trained well

Indonesia once experienced food sovereignty during the President Soeharto specifically in field of rice. During his era, cropping rice was one of the main agenda to make Indonesia better than before. It was proved by the exporting the rice to several south-east countries. However, in this millennium era, Indonesian is one of the biggest importer of rice even though its land is wide and vast. So, what is the main problem here?

Harvesting day could give fungus to grow as the straw is leftover
(image is credited by http://bbpadi.litbang.pertanian.go.id)

President Soeharto governed the Republic of Indonesia from 1965 to 1998. His government was the longest one about 32 years so it generates many social-political-economic issues. However, his government also produced amazing results and one of them was the food sovereignty in rice. His government created the "Swasembada Pangan" so the reserve of rice for national consumption was stable for five to ten years. So, people in Indonesia were securely safe from the starvation.

The food sovereignty currently is being planned again by today’s government. Throughout the program of Nawa Cita, the government of Indonesia intends to improve the production of rice from many provinces. Unfortunately, this requires lots of budgets including in constructing the facilities and infrastructures. Despite of those aspects, the government also is warned by the natural threats such as climate change, natural disasters and biological attacks from pests in the quantity of harvesting rice.

What challenges due to achieve food sovereignty in Indonesia

As we mentioned before on the previous articles, one of the problems in managing and organizing the natural resources in Indonesia is unprofessionalism (Ullah, Febriamansyah, & Yonariza, 2017). For example, the demands of maintaining land for cropping rice is treated unexpectedly. The owner of the land will abandon the land after harvesting period and maintain it before the cropping season started. This reckless and unprofessional act will make the land quality for cropping rice low which can disturb the production of the rice itself.

This unprofessional act was caused by the lack of knowledge among the farmers or growers. The solution is simple, the government must conduct training for the growers so that they can maintain and treat their land. Scientifically speaking, the maintenance the land will prevent the minerals within it kept which can be beneficial for the crops planted on it.

One of the next challenges along with the educational aspects of the growers is the biological attacks from pests. However, environmentally speaking, the pests attack the farm based on the seasons except the fungus. One of the most pathogenic fungus that can account a third loss in rice production is Magnaporthe oryzae during the harvesting season (Nalley, Tsiboe, Durand-Morat, Shew, & Thoma, 2016). This pathogen fungus colonized the farms when the farmers left uncontrollably the straw rice in farm itself based on the paper.

Those two issues address the government of Indonesia to be concerned about the lack of knowledge among the farmers.

Solution in increasing the opportunity of food sovereignty in rice production

Therefore, based on the analysis of issues during the production of the rice that unprofessionalism in managing the farms is the most important reason. The government should actively participate throughout the local unit in addressing this issue. To improve the production, engineers, biologists, or even scientists which are employed by the government must go to the farms and control those. On the other hand, the universities which have faculty of agricultural technology must monitor the scientific issue during the process of controlling.

Due to the lack of knowledge, socialization, training and workshops must be conducted so the farmers or growers can protect the farms from unexpected issues such as the presence of fungus. These two solutions are one of the effective and efficient solution in solving these two issues.

References
[1] Nalley, L., Tsiboe, F., Durand-Morat, A., Shew, A., & Thoma, G. (2016). Economic and environmental impact of rice blast phatogen (Magnaporthe oryzae) alleviation in the United States. PLoS ONE 11 (12), e0167295.
[2] Ullah, R., Febriamansyah, R., & Yonariza. (2017). Challenges of Managing Natural Resources in West Sumatera Indonesia. Redefining Diversity and Dynamics of Natural Resources Management in Asia, 3-10.