The Jakarta Globe, Arti Ekawati, February 25, 2009
The Agriculture Ministry plans to survey the management of lands leased by the state to large-scale plantation companies across the country to identify those that are not being worked on or have been abandoned, Achmad Mangga Barani, the Agriculture Ministry’s director general of plantations, said on Tuesday in Jakarta.
Owners of abandoned plantations, he said, would be warned and their licenses revoked after 18 months if they failed to cultivate the leased lands.
He said the survey would categorize plantations into five categories: excellent, good, adequate, poor and abandoned.
In determining a plantation’s category, the ministry would take various factors into account, such as soil management, financial management, economic performance and the management of social relations in the vicinity of the plantation.
Achmad said that the survey was aimed at encouraging big plantation firms to manage their lands better and to minimize abandonment.
The survey, he said, would start in the middle of the year and would focus on three major types of plantation: cacao, oil palm and rubber.
The owners of abandoned plantations would then be issued with warnings. “We will give them 18 months to improve their management after the warnings,” Achmad said. “If there is no improvement, we will withdraw their plantation licenses and confiscate the land.”
The survey is also being done to determine how much of plantation land has been abandoned.
“We must recalculate and reclassify the land to identify the exact area,” he said.
He said that instead of lying abandoned, the land could be used for other purposes, such as the growing of food crops.
Winarno Tohir, chairman of the Progressive Farmers’ and Fishermen’s Association, or KTNA, welcomed the government’s plan to seize abandoned plantations.
“It’s a good idea,” he said. “The lands could be used for the growing of food crops and for increasing both farmers’ incomes and national food production.”
According to Winarno, there are currently some 56 million hectares of abandoned plantations across the country, with about 32 million hectares consisting of abandoned rubber and oil palm plantations.
“It would be very disturbing if we weren’t able to use this abandoned plantation land for something useful, considering the limited area of land for growing food crops,” he said.
At present, Indonesia only has about 7 million hectares of irrigated paddy fields.
“This area could be expanded by taking over the abandoned plantations. So, we would end up being able to produce more rice,” Winarno said.
Sutarto Alimoeso, the Agriculture Ministry’s director general of food crops, said that the National Land Agency, or BPN, had identified 9.1 million hectares of idle land that could be given over to the growing of food.
“The land could be parcelled out to small farmers over the next three to five years,” he said.
However, he warned that not all the land would be suitable for rice cultivation.
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