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Improving food production in an era of growing challenges – Academia

Umito November 7, 2024

With 25.2 million people living in poverty, food crop production is of strategic importance to Indonesia. A reduction in food production would almost certainly result in an increase in prices, thereby increasing the costs of these poor people. Unfortunately, the production of major food crops has seen a downward trend.

Corn production, for example, fell from 16.5 million tonnes in 2022 to 14.8 million tonnes in 2023. Likewise, during these same years, rice production decreased by 31.5 million at 31.1 million tonnes. Furthermore, between January and April 2024, rice production was 17.5 percent lower than the same period in 2023. As a result of this alarming trend, current rice prices are around 20 percent higher than the same period in 2023. ‘last year.

Challenges of food production

A number of factors contribute to the downward trend in food production.

The first, and perhaps most important, is climate change. This results in a rise in temperatures which negatively affects food production, particularly that of rice and corn.

Second, there is the conversion of agricultural land (especially food crops) to non-agricultural purposes. This conversion is reflected in the decrease in the number of agricultural holdings from 31.7 million in 2013 to 29.4 million in 2023.

Following the reduction of agricultural land, a third problematic factor appears. From 2013 to 2023, the number of marginal farms – those owning less than 0.5 hectares of land – increased from 14.3 million to 16.9 million, meaning that 61% of Indonesia’s farms are marginal. The marginalization of farms can lead to inefficient production processes as their area is much smaller than the economic scale. Furthermore, without land consolidation, it is difficult and less economical to apply mechanization and other technologies to small and fragmented agricultural lands.