Rice Production Problem in Indonesia

Indonesia is a wide and big country. It consists of so many islands and become the 4th 

country which has the biggest population in the world. Almost all Indonesia people eat rice every day 

for their main food. They haven’t felt full and enough if they haven’t eat rice for their meal. With the 

big number of population, Indonesia needs a big amount of rice as a food supply for the people. 

That’s why; rice is very important commodities in Indonesia, and rice production is also become the 

important thing in this country.

With the big amount of rice needed in Indonesia, although it has a wide area of land; 

Indonesia still can’t fulfill the needs. Actually, data shows that the actual rice production in Indonesia 

has passed 101.4% of self-sufficiency ratio on 2013. But every year, Indonesia still always import

big amount of rice. In the year of 2014, Indonesia imported 687.681.501kg of rice that worth about 

US$ 388,178 million from another country. And some of the country that exports the rice to 

Indonesia like Vietnam and Myanmar has more limited land compared to Indonesia. Why it is 

happened?

Beside imported rice, Indonesia also exported some special rice for specific uses like 

restaurant or some specific diet. Also the distribution that is not widely spread and evenly distributed 

makes not every people get enough of rice for their life needs. But the problem that is interesting for 

me as a Landscape Architecture major student is about the land use changing of rice field into 

non-agricultural uses that happen every time and makes the decreasing of rice field area, and also 

lower the number of rice production in total. 

During the year of 2000-2002, rice field land conversion to non-agricultural uses like 

residential area, industry, office, roadway, and the public uses is about 110.160 hectare per year in 

average. That means that there is about 300 hectare of rice field turns into non-agricultural uses per 

day in Indonesia. If it happen every year and not stopped, the area of rice field in Indonesia will 

become lower and lower. 

Development by land conversion into any other uses that needed is basically will naturally 

happened. But if it happen on the still productive land and not arranged well by the government 

regulations, this will become a problem. Many regulations are made by the government for control 

this land-use changing phenomena, but there still not working. Because the citizen still can easily 

turn the land into what use they want, especially for rice field area. This may because the regulation 

that made for control the land-use changing is not strict and not completed by the hard punishment.

The complete land-use plan of all of Indonesia area must made by the accordance with the 

soil specification information. So the residential area will not be built in the fertile area and vice versa. 

The infertile, left and abandoned area that still in a big number in Indonesia must be used wisely so 

the rice fields don’t have to be changed as the non-agricultural uses that have become a serious 

problem now and in the future.

The technology of rice planting in narrow area like hydroponic, vertical planting or 

verticulture, and roof planting also can become the innovative solution for the diminishing rice field 

area. Without needs the big or wide area, the production can be increased or stabilized –in case of the 

still decreasing rate of rice field area- and the rice self-sufficiency can be reached.

Salma Fadhilah

Overview of Regional Sustainability Science report

Class Instructor : Prof. Dr. NITTA, Youji

ASEAN International Mobility for Students (AIMS) Program 2016

Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology