Indonesia may face a food crisis within the next 10 years should it fail to overcome the disparity between its rapidly growing population and its limited ability to expand arable land for food production.
With the population growth rate of between 1.3 percent and 1.5 percent a year, Indonesia needs to increase the annual production of the country's staple food of rice by at least 1.8 million tons by 2009, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono was quoted Tuesday by local newspaper The Jakarta post as saying.
Such a production increase requires another 600,000 hectares of paddy fields, while the country is at present in short supply of available arable land.
"The demand for more land can actually be fulfilled if there weren't so many land conversion for other purposes, such as for factories or housings," Anton said during a visit to South Sulawesi province on Monday.
"But the fact is that the availability of potential arable land is currently unavailable."
The country has to import 1.5 million tons of rice this year to secure supply and stabilize prices.
Source: Xinhua
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