The mega food estate project is back in the spotlight when the PDI-P Party calls President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s food estate program a failure, and has become an environmental crime.
Hasto Kristiyanto said the food barn project was stalled and suspected of being misused. This project is now only impacting forest logging and not producing anything.
“In practice, this policy was apparently misused, then the forests were cut down, and the food estate was not developed properly. That is part of a crime against the environment,” he said.
Previously, this Food Estate was a strategic priority project initiated by President Jokowi at the start of his second term. However, this is a project of the Ministry of Agriculture. But the practice on the ground is carried out by the Ministry of Defense involved.
Under the leadership of Prabowo Subianto, the Defense Minister, who was tasked by the President to provide support for the implementation of a food estate, mobilized TNI soldiers to carry out large-scale plantings of cassava in a number of provinces in Indonesia.
He targets the capacity to reach 1.4 million ha in Indonesia by the end of 2025, to take care of developing cassava food reserves which can be converted into tapioca flour for various food needs.
“The plan for the future is cassava and in Central Kalimantan we will start in 2021, 30,000 ha. Then until the end of 2025 our target will continue to increase, until the end of 2025 as many as 1.4 million ha,” he said.
Meanwhile, Syahrul Yasin Limpo, Minister of Agriculture explained, the Ministry of Defense planted cassava as a form of effort to increase strategic food reserves in a total area of 60,000 ha for the two Ministries.
On the other hand, Syahrul denied that the food estate program was part of an environmental crime because it had been running well and complied with the regulations. Meanwhile, Prabowo did not give a significant response to the issue.
