Adding The Number Of Rice Production, 8 Thousand Hectares Of Rawa Land In Lampung Are Processed Into Agricultural Land

Bandarlampung - Optimizing the processing of swampland covering an area of 28 thousand hectares in Lampung Province is being pursued in order to become productive agricultural land so as to generate or increase people's income. "Currently there are around 28 thousand hectares of swampland that are being monitored or optimized by land processing for agricultural land," said the Head of the Food Security, Food Plants and Horticulture Office of Lampung Province, Bani Ispriyanto in Bandarlampung, quoted from ANTARA, Saturday, May 18. He said the optimization of swamp processing activities in his area was carried out to increase the amount of rice production, which usually only came from dry agricultural land such as rain fields.

"This year's rice production target is only 3.3 million tons from rice fields outside the swamp. If it is added to the number of results of optimizing swampland, there will be more additional, but the number is currently still being calculated," he said. He continued the optimization of the swampland as a special effort to increase production, so that it has a different planting pattern than agricultural land usually. "Optimizing this swampland is a special effort, so it is different from others. It will have a separate pattern not together with other rice fields because the soil conditions are different," he said.

According to him, 28 thousand hectares of swampland which is currently being managed into agricultural land, can continue to grow to support regional food security. "This optimized swampland is to increase production, from the previous swampland only having a zero planting index (IP) can go up to the planting index one and two," he added.

He said the optimization of the swampland was included in the planting movement program to pursue additional area of rice planting, as well as the pursuit of ongoing rain. "The planting movement program in this swampland is carried out to pursue rain, so that it can catch additional planting areas that were hampered yesterday when there was dryness. With the optimization of swampland, it is hoped that production can increase," he said. The overall Lampung Province has prepared 78,000 hectares of swampland for the expansion of rice planting in the area, and 28 thousand hectares of swampland have begun to be managed. The program is a continuation of the Ministry of Agriculture's swampland optimization program, and the optimization locations are located in Tulang Bawang, Mesuji, East Lampung, South Lampung, and Central Lampung Regencies.