Agricom.id, RIAU - Riau Province planted some commodities in some areas having agriculture areas, such as, the paddy fields, and plantations. The planting was done together with the farmers around to anticipate the possibility of food deficit and crisis.

Governor of Riau, H. Syamsuar said that the planting covered the food and horticulture plantations, such as, paddy, corn, vegetables, and fruits, and the other agriculture sub sectors, such as, yam, and cassava. The planting is about to anticipate the increasing price because of the limited access to the distribution.

 “When other regions implement the big scale social distancing or pembatasan sosial berskala besar (PSBB), the flow of food distribution from other regions to ours would have limits too and the price would be more expensive. We have to anticipate this as soon as possible,” he said when speaking in the ‘Gerakan Tanam Penyediaan Pangan Daerah' in Village of Kualu, Sub district of Tambang, District of Kampar, Wednesday (6/5/2020), as in the official written statement to Agricom.id.

He continued that Riau has arranged the planting system through the instruction of governor to the regents and majors in the province. It is about the integrated planting between the production and the market access, advantaging the yards, planting the intercrops, and the planting in the pot and polybag.

 “The goal is to balance the supply and demand of the food and to stabilize the price. Besides it needs to do extensification, such as, expanding the areas to plant by making new paddy fields, rehabilitating the abandoned areas, optimizing the areas, advantaging the sleeping land, and the areas belonging to the government’s offices/institutions/privates,” he said.

He thought that these are also as the response to what President Joko Widodo instructed to make new paddy fields and anticipate to the drought. The other thing to do based on the spatial plans of Riau which were made in 2018, the spatial in Riau reached 514.130 hectares (ha).

“We would tell the report of the food agency, Riau province, in April the harvest would cover 9.246,4 ha. The rice production in April-June would be 40.435,1 tons. I emphasized that if the Covid-19 hits or not, we should not be complacent. The agriculture should always be done; do not stop,” he said.

From Gorontalo, many people also planted. They were suggested to advantage and optimize their house yards and empty areas.

Vice Governor of Gorontalo, Idris Rahim said that the planting is about to multiply the stocks. He also guaranteed that in the next three months, the food stocks would be in control.

“In the Covid-19 pandemic, the food stocks for the next three months are in control because the districts and cities reported that they have enough and surplus stocks,” he said.

He also mentioned that the province keeps facilitating and urging the farmers to accelerate the planting so that the harvest season (August – September) would multiply the food stocks in Gorontalo.

“Once again, Insya Allah our food for the next three months would be safe,” he said.

District of Kediri did the same. Regent of Kediri, Haryanti Sutrisno directly urged the officers to socialize the planting to multiply the local needs.

“We are optimist and could maintain the food security nationally, namely in the massive harvest in April which would reach 50.758 tons of dry grain. In the end of this year, we are optimist to get surplus rice reaching 50 thousand tons. Kinds of chili would be surplus reaching 29 thousand tons, and onion would be too reaching 1000 tons," he said.

In the previous, Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo said that some provinces were in rice deficit. But they are not now because the surplus regions did intervention.

“After the intervention, the provinces in deficit are Riau Island, Bangka Belitung, and North Maluku. But everything runs well,” he said.

He thought that the intervention that the government did, were, allocating the rice stocks nationally from the surplus regions to the deficit ones, and coordinating with badan urusan logistik (Bulog) to distribute the rice.

"The good distribution is the key to maintain the rice stock availability. We hope that there would be no lockdown or isolation,” he said. (A2)