Fannesa Adisty Laksmita – Indonesia's presidents keep trying to make food estates work but the scheme will fall short without engaging the true stakeholders and honestly assessing the project's merits.
With the lofty aim of making Indonesia, a country of 283 million people, self-sufficient in food, different presidents have adopted and reintroduced the food estate project under different names. However, these leaders have largely missed the mark because of limited public consultation and participation and a failure to objectively evaluate criticism, which has contributed to poor public policy on food sufficiency. Dreaming of achieving food self-sufficiency is not wrong, but Indonesia must learn from past mistakes.
Indonesia's current food estate project theoretically integrates crop production, plantations, and livestock farming to boost agricultural output and decrease rice imports by 2027. Announced by then President Joko Widodo in 2020, it was a National Strategic Project for 2020-2024. More recently, President Prabowo Subianto visited Papua two weeks after his inauguration to reaffirm his commitment to these food estates.
Food estates date back to 1995 when then President Suharto introduced the "Mega Rice" project to achieve rice self-sufficiency by converting 1 million hectares (ha) of peat swamps in Central Kalimantan into paddy fields. However, Suharto's government disregarded experts who had warned that the programme would fail given the lack of nutrients in peat swamps. Furthermore, the project was marred by an unsettled question about where customary land-use rights fit within state law, which led to community protests.
After a year of drought, fires started burning through the soil, resulting in transnational peat fires in 1997, prompting the project's abandonment. Yet according to the government's messaging, this was the result of "ineffective management".
In 2010, then President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono revived the project to tackle the existing food and energy crisis. He launched the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) in South Papua, which aimed to open 1.2 million ha of agricultural fields. But the government cultivated only 100 ha. MIFEE was also implemented by bypassing customary land rights holders. Moreover, an investigation by German media company Deutsche Welle revealed that the scheme resulted in chronic malnutrition, as the project changed local dietary patterns.
Despite his predecessors' failures, Widodo expanded the programme to other provinces, following the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's warning about supply chain disruptions related to the Covid-19 pandemic and a potential food crisis.
However, Widodo's project sparked conflict with local inhabitants excluded from the process. Indigenous people in South Papua opposed the plan, saying it was implemented without consultation or socialisation. In response, the National Committee for Agrarian Reform sought then defence minister Prabowo's oversight for the project, which led to the "militarisation of agriculture".
The business community, facilitated by its proximity to the government, is well-positioned to benefit from the implementation of food estates. Two companies involved in the projects are affiliated with Prabowo and the former presidential chief of staff, Moeldoko.
Overall, Indonesia's experiments with food estates have failed to meet their output targets. For instance, the food estate in Central Kalimantan experienced a decline in rice production in its first three years (the output dropped from 457,952 to 330,781 tonnes). The output recovered in 2024 to 366,146 tonnes but remained below its pre-food estate production levels.
In addition, food estates also overlook the country's complex food security issues. Indonesia ranked 63 out of 113 countries in the Global Food Security Index 2022. The same report noted that Indonesia falls below the average score in agricultural research and development, political commitment, dietary diversity, and social barriers.
Successive presidents reiterating the food estate idea shows that ineffective public policy ideas are perpetuated without truly learning from past experiences and failures. Policy formulation seems to continue in a vacuum, with minimal public consultation. The present government's insistence on food estates underscores how the project was conceived from the president's belief that food self-sufficiency can promote political stability.
Indonesia's leaders have repeatedly failed to consider the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental costs of developing food estates. The schemes are poorly executed and complicated by the military's involvement in land clearing. This approach has been met with strong public resistance. Yet as a presidential candidate in 2024, Prabowo dismissed such criticism, saying, "If any national figure is questioning the food estate project...either he/she does not understand or does not want to understand".
Interestingly, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which stands outside Prabowo's broad government coalition, criticised the project during Widodo's time, denouncing it as an "environmental crime" in 2023. However, the PDI-P's move was arguably not driven by an interest in improving the policy discourse but more by the deteriorating relationship between the party and Widodo as the 2024 elections drew closer.
Without mainstreaming participatory practices and ensuring a receptive national leadership, poor public policy ideas will persist. The government looks likely to continue cherry-picking advice that aligns with the president's beliefs about self-sufficiency and to avoid honest reviews of policy success or failure on food estates. Policymaking occurs in an echo chamber that does not reflect the needs of the public, which undermines the spirit of decentralised governance post-reformasi (reform).
Many academics have argued for agricultural intensification and preserving local dietary patterns rather than large-scale food production, which has proven unsustainable and detrimental to Indonesia. Remedies can involve encouraging public consultation and scrutiny to enhance public policy formation, engaging practitioners, academics, non-governmental organisations, local government, and particularly Indonesia's small farmers and Indigenous peoples in preliminary studies, as well as implementation and evaluation.
Finally, the government should ideally provide data and thorough analysis of the food estates' output and allow parliament to perform as a true check-and-balance. In today's uncertain climate and with a growing population to feed, Indonesia's leaders can no longer afford to depend on public policy rhetoric that promotes policies with unclear results.
[Fannesa Adisty Laksmita is a Research Officer in the Indonesia Studies Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.]
Source: https://fulcrum.sg/indonesias-food-estates-why-poor-public-policy-persists