PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA – Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo (SYL) confirmed that 12 food commodities would be available in facing extreme weather. He thought, the food commodities would be available for many parties would involve in, collaborate and be synergy between the government and smallholders (farmers).
The government has prepared 9 things to identify and map the dry regions. Everything has been categorized in red, yellow, ad green category according to each region.
“Green category means the water is very good and should be optimized; some regions got yellow category which means, the water is enough and they need technology intervention; some regions are in red category and need certain approaches,” SYL said, as in the official statement to Palmoilmagazine.com.
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The things to do, are, improving reservoir, trench, deep well, infiltration well, rehabilitating irrigation that regional governments should reinforce. Besides, the government selected dry – durability seeds that every district should have intervened.
“Minimally, 1.000 hectares where we have to force to be the food barn – models in each region. But what to be aware of about the impacts of El Nino is the pests that could make low productivity. That is why we have to be wise in making food barns in each region,” he said.
He continued every sufficiency is the instruction from President Joko Widodo that told him to maintain and provide 12 commodities. “Alhamdullilah we have rice that is over stock almost 7 (seven) million tons. The data is from Central Bureau of Statistic (CBS), not from us (Ministry of Agriculture,” he said.
Besides rice, SYL told, corn stocks have been more than 5 million, soyoil about 18 million, red onion is good in numbers, big chili about 16 thousand tons, cow meat, eggs, crystal sugar, palm cooking oil are in good numbers.
“Of course, in my position and function, I focus on the availability. It can be seen in our availability they are in good numbers. Data from CBS, the impacts of El Nino would cover 70 thousand hectares only from more than 10 million hectares,” SYL said. (T2)