Prabowo: Forests Must Be A Source Of Employment

Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto delivered a speech at the Open Senate Meeting in the context of the 57th Anniversary of the UGM Faculty of Forestry which took place online, Friday, October 23 (Luqman Hakim / Antara)

JAKARTA - Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto hopes that the forestry sector in Indonesia will be able to become a source of business breakthroughs and create wide job vacancies in the midst of global economic competition.

"In the future, Indonesian forestry must be able to create business opportunities and breakthroughs and be able to create wide employment opportunities, both for foresters and people living around forests," said Prabowo when delivering a speech at the Open Senate Meeting on the occasion of the anniversary -57 Faculty of Forestry UGM which takes place online and is monitored in Yogyakarta, reported by Antara, Friday, October 23.

Prabowo said Indonesia currently has the potential for 12.7 million hectares of social forestry programs in forest areas that can be developed into areas of food sovereignty and the production of good timber forest materials.

Of that potential, around 4.2 million hectares of which have been granted social forestry permits to farmer groups both in Java and outside Java. Part of the area or around 2 million hectares can be used for food crop areas from within the forest area.

"This shows that the forestry sector can provide benefits and prosperity to communities around the forest," he said.

In order to develop economic programs in forest areas in the context of realizing food sovereignty, according to him, the government must have the courage to take steps in favor of the program.

"One of them is by providing credit allocation to the forestry sector. With this alignment, we hope that modern food agriculture will be developed," he said.

Furthermore, Prabowo hopes that Indonesia will be able to produce new, strong, intelligent and professional foresters who can be empowered to work in food sovereignty programs in forest areas, for example as young entrepreneurs (millennial farmers) or cooperative managers in the food sector.

"This is an anticipation to take advantage of the demographic bonus in the future," said Prabowo.