JAKARTA - Minister of Home Affairs (Mendagri) Tito Karnavian asked every regional head throughout Indonesia to take advantage of sleeping land into productive agriculture. This is to create food availability and towards food self-sufficiency.
"We also ask all regions so that unproductive sleeping areas can be used as agricultural land. This means adding land (for agriculture)," Tito said quoting Antara.
The Minister of Home Affairs emphasized the importance of utilizing sleeping land into productive agriculture because it is closely related to food security and self-sufficiency.
According to him, the use of sleeping land can effectively increase food production locally, thereby reducing dependence on food imports, and increasing the country's food independence.
In addition to asking to use sleeping land into productive agricultural land, Tito also reminded every local government not to turn agricultural land into a business place.
"In addition, we will also encourage agriculture, maintain existing land, do not convert it into a commercial area or others," said Tito.
Furthermore, Tito also reminded local governments that if they already have agricultural land, they should be optimized so that they can help in realizing regional and national food security.
He admitted that in the future his party would make a circular that would be addressed to all regional heads in Indonesia.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Home Affairs will create a special team to evaluate the circular that will be made, in order to find out which areas have implemented or not implemented the circular later.
"Well, among these are the points that we will submit a circular to the regional head. And after that, we will create a team, a team to evaluate which ones are working, which ones are not," said Tito.
Tito emphasized that the central government will provide rewards for regional heads who have successfully carried out this task well. However, on the other hand, Tito also stated that there will be punishment for those who do not carry out this task properly.
"Those who do it we will give rewards, those who do not do it, there is punishment," added Tito.
The Ministry of Agriculture (Kementan) together with the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) are ready to strengthen national food production through land optimization and pumping.
Minister of Agriculture Andi Amran Sulaiman said that optimizing land and pumping is the right step because it has proven to be a definite solution to Indonesia self-sufficiency as well as the world's food barn.
"Currently, all countries are experiencing a decline in production, where there are many countries starving and there are many of our relatives lying down. Therefore, we must mitigate properly and correctly from now on. Therefore, we have a quick solution in the form of optimization and pumping," said Amran.
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The Minister of Agriculture said that the agricultural sector must be a common concern considering that in the future Indonesia will face an extreme climate, including a long drought.
He wants collaboration between the central and regional governments to continue to be strengthened so that it becomes the key to self-sufficiency.
"And thank God, today we have the full support of the Minister of Home Affairs, which God willing, after this we will increase our collaboration with the regional government throughout Indonesia," he said.
Amran added that the Ministry of Agriculture has issued a short-term policy towards food self-sufficiency such as optimization of 400 thousand hectares of swampland, pumping 1 million hectares of rice fields and transformation of traditional agriculture to modern agriculture 250 thousand hectares.
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