Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo admitted Friday that it would take time before Indonesia could be self-sufficient in food due to the uncertain climate conditions. 

Jokowi was on a business trip to inspect water pumps in South Sulawesi’s regency of Bantaeng. Jokowi claimed that the pumps would provide enough water to the fields, even enabling farmers to make their harvests thrice a year. He said that the regency’s excess harvests -- including the staple crop rice-- would also be able to feed the people in Indonesia’s new capital Nusantara, which lies in East Kalimantan. 

While work is underway to enable Indonesia to meet its food demand through domestic production, Jokowi said climate phenomena like El Nino or La Nina disrupt the country’s agricultural productivity. El Nino brings drier weather, while La Nina leads to wetter conditions. 

“Well, food self-sufficiency is a long process. Sometimes we are becoming more self-sufficient, but there are times when [the production] drops because of the uncertain climate conditions,” Jokowi told reporters in Bantaeng.

He added: “We used to be self-sufficient, but we lost that status because of El Nino and La Nina. I think climate really affects agricultural productivity across the globe. Over the past two years, countries that usually had excess production even experienced a sharp decline.”

Agricultural Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman recently said that the populous Indonesia could be back to being self-sufficient in food within the next three years. To this end, the government is making some short and long-term strategies, which include water pump installation and expansion of existing rice paddy fields. Indonesia was self-sufficient in its rice supply in 2017 during which the country did not import what it called “medium rice” -- a term referring to rice that is good but not the best quality. The same goes for 2018 and 2019. 

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), Indonesia imported 3 million tons of rice, the highest over the past 5 years. Almost 1.4 million tons came from Thailand. Vietnam became Indonesia’s second-largest source of rice that year, with Vietnamese imports reaching 1.1 million tons.