"Actually, it is easy for us to achieve the surplus target if it is only rice but if it includes other commodities such as sugar, soybean or maize, we will need new agricultural lands," the minister said on the sidelines of the 33rd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Agriculture and Forestry (AMAF) on Friday.
The statement reaffirmed the government`s previous commitment to continuously boosting its annual rice and maize production so that its food self-sufficiency target would be achieved in 2014.
"For soybean alone we will need 500 thousand hectares of new land while for sugar we will need at least 350 thousand hectares," he said.
The agriculture minister said earlier that the government had begun the development of new agricultural land in Indonesia.
"For agriculture, we have started to develop one in Bulungan district, in East Kalimantan," the minister said on Wednesday.
With an estimated number of population at 237 million, Indonesia`s average per capita rice field is only about 500 meters. This only accounts for about 50 percent of that of Vietnam which reaches 1,000 meters per capita.(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
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