Walhi: The Three Vice Presidential Candidates Are Busy Discussing Food Estate, But Hiraukan Is The Food Sovereignty Concept

Forest Campaign Manager and Walhi Uli Gardens Arta Siagian. (Photo: Theresia Agatha/VOI)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) views that the three candidates for vice president (cawapres) are only busy talking about food security without thinking about the concept of food sovereignty itself.

Forest Campaign Manager and Walhi Uli Gardens, Arta Siagian, said that all vice presidential candidates have not thought about what production mode will be used to realize food security nationally.

"It is this mode of food security that encourages the construction of large-scale food development such as food estate. Because (the government) doesn't care who provides the food and doesn't care, what is the real safety of the ecosystem," Uli said at a press conference in Jakarta, Tuesday, January 23.

"So, there is no concept of food sovereignty that has emerged from the three vice presidential candidates because this food sovereignty is the most important thing actually," he continued.

Uli said, there are at least 10 principles that must be guaranteed when the government has discussed food sovereignty.

Two of them are related to the food estate players themselves and the production tools used.

"The first principle is the perpetrator. The main perpetrators in providing food are not just corporations, the fact is that most of the food on our dining table is produced by the hands of farmers," he said.

According to him, so far it is not large corporations that control very large land and then produce food.

"Because most of the land controlled actually falls to the industrialization of food, not food directly in front of the dining table," said Uli.

The second principle is related to the production tools used, including land.

"It will not be possible for us to talk about food sovereignty if later the government always eliminates agricultural land through its policies. What is it? For example, converting agricultural land into oil palm plantations or food production lands into mining concessions," he said.

Uli assessed that if the government continued to focus only on the food estate itself, Indonesia was feared that it would not have real food security in the future.

"So, this is a contradictory thing. On the one hand, we talk about continuous downstreaming, for example, but on the other hand we talk about food dreams. This will not be possible because the enlargement from downstream is expected to encourage enlargement for the exploitation of other mining materials," he added.

As previously reported, Vice Presidential Candidate (Cawapres) number 1 Muhaimin Iskandar (Cak Imin) said he was concerned about the food estate project launched by President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) being very ignorant of the current condition of the Farmers.

"We are very concerned that efforts to procure national food through the food estate have proven to ignore our farmers, leave indigenous peoples, produce agrarian conflicts and even damage the environment," said Cak Imin in the second vice presidential debate, Sunday, January 21.

The Vice Presidential Candidate number 3 Mahfud MD said that the land that should have been planted with contemporary cassava was even overgrown with corn.

This was conveyed by Mahfud through his official account X @mohmahfudmd. Starting his tweet, the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (Menko Polhukam) said Indonesia was great like a milk pond.

"Indonesia is great like a milk pond. Well, planting millions of hectares of cassava for food estates that grow corn," wrote Mahfud.

Not getting there, Mahfud also mentioned that the corn planted was inappropriate. Apparently, planting was carried out in a polybag which he wrote was a goodie bag.

Mahfud suspects that this planting was carried out because the soil contour in Gunung Mas, Central Kalimantan, was not suitable for agricultural commodities.

"Eh, it turns out that the corn is planted with a goodie bag. Because, on the ground with the appearance of Mount Mas, it is impossible to grow corn," he said.

Meanwhile, Vice Presidential Candidate number 2 Gibran Rakabuming Raka had mentioned that the food estate program being run by the Jokowi government did not completely fail.

"Numbers one and three of these, right, compact food estates failed. I reiterate again, sir, indeed there were those who failed but there were also those who succeeded and had been harvested," said Gibran during the vice presidential debate.