Systemic Work Required For Food Self-Sufficiency
Systemic cooperation is required to achieve food self-sufficiency, according to Principal Researcher of National Coordinating Agency for Surveys and Mapping (Bakosurtanal), Prof. Ing. H. Fahmi Amhar, Ph.D in the Islamic and Civilization Seminar organized by the Student Body of Islamic Spirituality, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB-BKIM), Sunday (19/5) in IPB campus.
"Agriculture requires land, water, and infrastructure. Without land where do we plant? Without water there is no life. And without infrastructure such as roads or markets, it is difficult to sell the harvest. And as involving space, all these aspects are regulated in Law 24 of 2007 on Spatial Planning. Without sufficient knowledge of agriculture, in this era of regional autonomy a governor or Head of Regency could allocate a space unfriendly to agriculture or even convert agricultural land to a more commercial, or industrial real estate for example," said Prof. Fahmi.
According to Prof. Fahmi, it is also related to land issues. Most of our farmers are those who have no land, or have a very small or marginal land that is not sufficient to sustain life.
"There’s the Agrarian Law, but it is now pressured by the Investment Law allowing foreign investors to set up businesses with the holding right up to 95 years," he continued.
Agriculture also requires human resources. They will do the farming and need technology. This technology starts from land preparation, seedling, fertilization, pest control, post-harvest technology (warehousing, packaging) to ways of understanding market development and agricultural technology itself, namely e-agro.
"But if all these technologies are not smart, they may also be difficult to use because of their protections under the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)," he said.
And last but not least is the Social Economy. Agricultural economics should be seen as a supply chain. Without a contract of supply chain from farmers to end-users, the farming or growing patterns will be not sustainable, and so prices can be easily changed in both traditional markets and the long-tern Commodity Exchange. Socioeconomic issues also concern the financing (credit), import duties, the role of Bulog and so on. The government should also monitor the distribution of agricultural products throughout Indonesia. From this it appears that the success of farming is the fruit of the synergy of various other structures. Similarly, failure is the result of the failure of various other systems.
The activity that invited the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Human Ecology, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB-FEMA), Prof. Ahmad Sulaiman, and an Islamic Economist, Dr. Arim Nasim was opened by the Minister of Agriculture of Indonesia of the period 2004-2009. (Mtd)
