Agricom.id, JAKARTA – Indonesia has the big potential in agriculture. It needs power and togetherness from many sides, including the Army. Knowing this, ministry of agriculture, led by Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo took the Army to strengthen the development support, planting acceleration, and production enhancement of the food commodity through the food estate program and cow breeding development. The programs are about to fulfill the food needs namely paddy, corn, cow, and other commodities, such as, vegetables, fruit, plantations, namely coconut and breeding ducks.

“In general, the Army is ready to develop the acceleration from ministry of agriculture both technically and physically. If we have enough food in our country, the export would widely open,” he said when signing the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Army, Tuesday (29/9/2020) in the office of ministry of agriculture, as in the official statement to Agricom.id, in Jakarta.

He also told that the cooperation would be as the development to run the development program of agriculture.

“The cooperation would cover the enhancement of human resource capacity in agriculture, advantage of infrastructure, the development of agricultural technology innovation application, and other cooperation to realize the food self-sufficiency. I knew the response from the Army is incredible and so are the others. The Police also encouraged us in ministry of agriculture. I thank you, the Army for giving the development and also the supports from the regents and governors,” Syahrul said.

Chief of the Army, General (Army) Andika Perkasa emphasized that his side is always ready to support the food security program in ministry of agriculture. He thought that the Army and ministry of agriculture cooperate in many sectors and would always help them to prepare the food needs in the future.

“The food provision is the mission of the country. We think that this is part of our responsibility and in this case, we are ready with ministry of agriculture to maintain the food security,” he said.

For information, there are four focuses in ministry of agriculture to maintain the food security, they are, the food production and food plantation productivity enhancement, non-rice food diversification, the regional food stock reinforcement, and the agricultural mechanism and modernization. (A2)