El Nino: Minister asks South Kalimantan to support national food security

Banjarmasin, S Kalimatan (ANTARA) - Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo asked South Kalimantan to support national food security, while seriously anticipating extreme drought due to the El Nino phenomenon.

"Even though our country is currently not having a significant impact, we shouldn't be too confident," he said when chairing a coordination meeting on anticipating the impact of El Nino in South Kalimantan at Galaxy Hotel in Banjarmasin, Friday.

Minister, who was accompanied by the Governor H Sahbirin Noor, said that the impact of El Nino is real globally and threaten the agriculture in Indonesia.

He conveyed that Indonesian President Joko Widodo has ordered to look for reliable provinces to support national food security, including South Kalimantan, among six provinces determined.

Minister asked all stakeholders in this province to pay attention and intervene to solve problems, because of the weather phenomenon that can cause extreme drough in agriculture land.

Although not too worried about land condition in South Kalimantan which is dominated by swamp land with relatively adequate water, he asked, that it should be evidence of action from all to keep rice production to stay high.

"Because South Kalimantan usually proves that it can produce high rice farming," he pointed out.

During the threat of El Nino, he asked, the agricultural condition in South Kalimantan must be maintained  through various measures, so that it continue to contribute for national food security.

He said he was very happy with the provincial, district and city governments response along with other stakeholders, including TNI, Polri, Prosecutor's Office, who welcomed the coordination meeting, even jointly committed to go down to cope with the current condition.

"Moreover, the Governor of South Kalimantan said that 100,000 hectares are prepared to be worked on to increase food security in the province and for the nation," he explained.

The Agriculture Minister said among the efforts to anticipate the impact of El Nino are acceleration of planting using heat-resistant parity, mechanized intervention in areas that need it and upstream to downstream control.

For South Kalimantan, the minister considered it is very good in the handling. He hopes that the province could produce rice over one million tonnes this year.

"I saw the data last year it was around 800,000 tonnes, it should be able to rise to above one million tonnes," he said.