Jakarta – The government has pledged to speed up efforts to reduce the country's poverty rate and food scarcity over the next two years.

Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono revealed the government's ambitious target after a meeting with Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu, Minister of Transportation Jusman Syafii Djamal and President of the State Logistic Agency (Bulog) Mustafa Abubakar on Wednesday.

"Some 16 ministries and government institutions will support the program," Anton said as quoted by Antara.

However, he did not elaborate on the details of the programs that will be carried out to achieve the target. The minister said food scarcity was related to the poverty rate.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported the country's poverty rate reached 17.75 percent in 2006, higher than the previous year at 16.69 percent.

Anton said the increase was due to the fuel price hike last year. "In 2007, the poverty rate dropped to 16.58 percent as the country began to overcome the impact of the fuel price hike," he said. "We are now moving to the next stage of speeding up the reduction of the poverty rate," he said.

The minister said the food scarcity rate had dropped over the past 10 years from 7.9 percent in 1999 to only 2.5 percent in 2007. Anton warned Indonesia might face a food crisis within the next 10 years should it fail to overcome the disparity between the rapidly growing population and limited ability to expand arable land for food production.

He said with a population growth rate of between 1.3 percent and 1.5 percent per year, Indonesia needed to increase its annual production of rice to at least 1.8 million tons by 2009. Such a production increase requires another 600,000 hectares of paddy fields; yet available, arable land is in short supply around the country.

With Indonesia's current population growth creating such land-use dilemmas, Anton said food production in the country may face grave problems within the next 10 to 20 years if nothing is done.

He said Indonesia would also be unable to cut dependency on imported staple foods, including rice. Indonesia imported 1.5 million tons of rice this year to secure supplies and stabilize prices. The country's production of unhusked rice is expected to reach 57.05 million tons this year; up 4.76 percent from last year.

Meanwhile, head of the agriculture ministry's Food Resilience Body, Kaman Nainggolan, said one way to reduce the poverty rate was to fight illiteracy in the country. "Literate mothers in India have a better understanding and awareness of adequate food, so there are fewer malnourished children there," he said, citing a lesson learned from the world's second most-populated country.