Beware Of El Nino, DKI Provincial Government Asks Citizens To Plant Their Own Food

Illustration. Cipete residents in Jakarta take advantage of their house which has a second floor with a concrete not to grow crops on Thursday, November 14, 2019. (Between-Aprillio A)

JAKARTA - Head of the DKI Jakarta Food, Maritime and Agriculture Security Service (KPKP) Suharini Eliawati asked residents of the capital to help grow food ingredients that are considered easy to harvest.

This follows up on President Joko Widodo's instructions to anticipate the impact of the El Nino phenomenon in Indonesia.

"Every day, go ahead and plant it, after all, we prepare the seeds. Chili, terong, it's the fastest harvest, the age of 3 months has been harvested," Suharini told reporters, Mingu, July 30.

The DKI Provincial Government, said Eli, has also implemented a program to distribute plant seeds to the community. This is expected to be an alternative food source from the community itself.

Given, 98 percent of Jakarta's food comes from outside the area purchased to be sold to the people of the capital city.

"We distribute all the seeds of food crops. Not only food crops, we also divide fish seeds to accelerate the reduction in stunting rates. That is also part of intervention from the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government, in this case the KPKP Service," explained Suharini.

On the other hand, Suharini said that the DKI Provincial Government has also strengthened regional cooperation to avoid scarcity of food delivery stocks entering Jakarta due to crop failure.

"Strengthening cooperation between regions is very important. So indeed we really have a good relationship with the surrounding regions. Why? We are an area that is really a consumer area," said Suharini.

"Alhamdulillah, actually, our buffer areas have done it. We are assisted by our food BUMDs in addition to conducting training, in food sessions, we also carry out farming contracts," he added.

Previously, President Joko Widodo asked BUMN and local governments (Pemda) to strengthen and increase the budget for providing basic food assistance to the community as a step to anticipate the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon.

This is because El Nino can cause a number of areas to experience more drought, so it has the potential to fail to harvest.

"If possible, we have a budget for food assistance to the community to be strengthened, reproduced. For what reason, we are facing El Nino which we cannot calculate because it concerns the climate, so it must take precedence," said President Jokowi after reviewing the people's market at Rampal Field, Malang City, East Java, Monday, July 24.

According to Jokowi, the budget for providing basic food assistance must be prioritized because it involves the impact of El Nino which has the potential to disrupt food security.

In addition to strengthening basic food assistance, Jokowi has also ordered regional heads to increase the number of cheap markets in the regions.

Jokowi hopes that the cheap market and basic food assistance will prioritize areas that need more if El Nino has disturbed public health.

Based on the forecasts of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the phenomenon of El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is positive to strengthen each other so that this year's dry season can become drier and rainfall in the low to very low category.

If usually the rainfall ranges from 20 mm per day, this dry season the figure becomes once a month or even no rain at all.

The peak of dry dry water is predicted to occur in August to early September with conditions much drier than in 2020, 2021, and 2022.