Indonesia's Small Farmers Set To Play Role In Free Meal Plan

Govt taps decades-old social forestry scheme where local groups grow food on state land

- Linda Yulisman

GARUT (West Java) - A decades-old social forestry scheme where local communities tend to state land mostly for the purpose of conservation has become a key part of Indonesia's free meal programme for millions of people.

President Prabowo Subianto and his administration plan to feed some 80 million people within the first two years of launching the ambitious programme, set to officially begin in January.

To meet the operational needs of Mr Prabowo's flagship initiative, officials are looking to source its food from all avenues, including turning to small-scale farmers who will receive help from the government to ramp up production and bolster food security.

Around 15,000 collectives of farmers under the social forestry scheme have been tending to plots on state land. The initiative began in 1995 with local communities helping to conserve state and customary forests by growing crops on once barren and degraded land.

Under the initiative, sales of food produced by the millions of social forestry farmers, including key raw goods such as rice, corn, soya bean and coffee, came to 1.1 trillion rupiah (S$83.9 million) in 2023. Indonesia's whole agriculture industry in the same year was worth 2,617 trillion rupiah.

In 2015, the government overhauled the scheme, giving legal rights to these rural communities for up to 35 years, to manage 12.7 million ha of state and customary forests - equivalent to the size of Java island. This was planned as a way to address poverty and reduce conflicts over land tenure.