South Kalimantan's DPKP prints rice field on 35 years abandoned land

Banjarmasin, S Kalimatan (ANTARA) - The South Kalimantan Agriculture and Food Security Office (DPKP) is now running a program to print rice fields on land that has not been used for 35 years in Bati-Bati, Tanah Laut District.

Head of the DPKP Syamsir Rahman here on Saturday informed that people's rice field printing program in Bati-Bati had actually preceded the 2025 program.

"Because, before 2025, we have already started working on people's rice field printing there for a month and a half," he said.

He said rice field developing program to achieve Indonesia's food self-sufficiency in Bati-Bati covering an area of 236 hectares. "This land has not been cultivated for about 35 years," he said.

Today, he said, 48 hectares of the land is being cultivated and it has been visited by the Indonesian Minister of Agriculture.

"Technically in clearing the land, we made irrigation and embankment around the entire land first, then we plot the plots in the middle," he explained.

Syamsir optimistic that rice-field printing in Bati-Bati will be successful, because it is directly supervised and gets special attention from the Ministry of Agriculture.

Apart from Bati-Bati, he said, land optimization (oplah) program and rice-field printing in South Kalimantan, is also carried out in other districts, including 41,000 hectares in Tapin .

"And in several other districts," said Syamsir.

In total, rice field printing program in South Kalimantan in 2025 covering an area of 75,000 hectares.

"We can prepare 80 hectares for the program funded by the central government," he said.

Rice field printing program in this province, he said, is not only maximized this year, but in 2024 it has also been implemented about 40,000 hectares.

"So the target of rice field printing in South Kalimantan from 2024 to 2025 is 120,000 hectares," he said.

He agreed with Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman's optimism that South Kalimantan has a rice production potential of 5 million tons to contribute to national food.

His reason is that the potential land area for farming in South Kalimantan is 500,000 hectares spread across 13 districts and cities.