The food estate is considered an integrated food production development over a vast land area. At the Ministry of Defense, the food estate scheme, in the context of food security, is guided by the following criteria:
• Applied on a vast land with natural water sources, so it does not need expensive irrigation infrastructure development.
• Applied on fertile land so it does not need high dependency on fertilizers.
• Applied on areas easy to be protected from military or non-military attack.
• Has access to skilled human resources with high patriotism.
• Choose crops that can be cultivated with minimal effort.
• Choose crops with a high investment return.
• Choose crops with the highest calorie output per hectare.
Guided by these criteria, the Ministry of Defense chose cassava as the commodity to be planted for food security. However, the concept is modified by the technical ministries, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries. The Ministry of Agriculture chose rice as a food commodity. The reason is because Indonesians are already skilled in rice cultivation technology, so that they only need to multiply and extend rice field areas. Fortunately, there is already the former peatland development since the New Order era, which promoted expansion of rice fields outside Java.
At the same time, the Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries chose shrimp as the food security commodity, because Indonesia once succeded as the largest shrimp exporter in the world. The Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries wants to revive tens of thousand of hectares of deactivated shrimp farms throughout the country. This commodity is also considered of high value and easy to market. (TABLE 1)
Aside from the three ministries, there is also the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs which opens up land for the food security program. The land area of the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs was planted with vegetables, corn, onions, potatoes, etc. It has a business model of collaboration between farmers and national private companies in the form of nucleus plasma. The absorption of the farming products are aligned with the need of national private companies involved, such as Indofood and some other large FMCG companies.
Present-Day Challenges
Food self-sufficiency has an important meaning in maintaining and ensuring a nation’s safety and security, because food reserves become a deterrent factor effective for defense. Moreover, the power of food reserves determines the nation’s survival towards threats of war, disease pandemics, prolonged natural disasters, and embargos from other countries.
At present, the staple food for Indonesians is rice. From 1954 to 2015, the main food consumption has shifted from various carbohydrate sources to rice and flour. In 1954, rice consumption was only 53.5% of all carbohydrate sources, followed by cassava (22.3%), corn (18.9%), and potatoes (5%). In 1987, the success of rice self-sufficiency through the green revolution enabled rice consumption to rise to 81.1%, while cassava and corn consumption decreased to 10% and 7.8%. The choice of rice as a source of staple food kept increasing until in 2005; only 4 out of 34 provinces still relied on other carbohydrate food sources: East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, South East Sulawesi, and Papua. Increase in rice consumption peaked in 2017, when it was reported at 10,047 million tons, or an average increase of 0.05% per year since 2010. Currently, the per capita rice consumption reached 130 kg/year/capita.
Data from the Ministry of Agriculture shows the National Food Logistic Agency’s rice stock at the end 2018 was 2.1 million tons. With Indonesian people’s daily rice consumption at 81,594 tonnes, our national food reserve would only cover 26-29 days. This number was much lower compared to the food reserve in neighboring countries such as Thailand, Phillipines, and India, which can provide food reserves for 128-182 days.
There must be an effort to to increase the national food reserve at least to equal that of neighboring countries, by providing a strategic food reserve of 9.8 million tons of rice. However, to provide such a food reserve would be difficult because Java as the center for rice production was becoming saturated, due to intensive management that resulted in dismal yields.
Based on the analysis of both aspects, the Ministry of Defense, as a leading sector, realised the need for other commodity alternatives to provide for the national food reserve, as the provider of a strategic food reserve managed or owned by the government. The strategic food reserve must also be able to store reserves for a certain period of time, maintain good quality, and be suitable for consumption. Moreover, the Law No. 1 Year 2012 mandated that national food security is based on food independence and sufficiency. The main focus on strengthening the food reserve is to choose a non-imported carbohydrate source. Fo that, we need alternatives of suitable crops to support food security, at least fulfilling the criteria of ones that are nutritious, long-lasting, of high productivity, and able to be widely managed.
The development of food estates is closely correlated with the defense economy. Considering the objective, food estates play an important role in the national economy recovery program to maintain the country’s stability and safety from an economic point of view. National security generally means to maintain the nation and country’s existence in the face of threats. In the Law No. 3 Year 2002 on national security, the health crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic could have threatened the country’s existence, one aspect being a lack of food. Thus defense towards non-military threats such as a food crisis placed the Ministries/Institutions as one of the main executors of defense, supported by other components or national strengths.
The application of food security begins with a planning stage. The Ministry of Defense prepared an initial concept for food estate development, with a scheme as follows:
• The nation’s defense system is a universal one, including all citizens and other national resources, whereby planning must be prepared early by the government and carried out totally, integrated, with direction, and continuously to maintain the nation’s sovereignty, area integrity, and safety of the nation from all threats.
• The management of national security is performed in all types of activities, in strategic and policy levels including planning, execution, monitoring, and control of national security.
• Food security development planning is prepared by focusing on planning to overcome threats of a food crisis, then the use of human and natural resources.
• The government’s policy needs to be used as a reference, in implementation in related organisations and the Ministry of Defense as supervisor and controller of the food security program.