New Era of Productive Rice Farming

Name: New Era of Productive Rice Farming
Uploaded: 2021-10-27T02:09:30Z
Duration: 20 min 32 s
Description: There were no more portraits of officials wearing bamboo hats, raising paddies and scythes like in the New Order era. Rice harvesters advanced through the muddy fields, reaping, threshing and bagging the paddy.

There were no more portraits of officials wearing bamboo hats, raising paddies and scythes like in the New Order era. Rice harvesters advanced through the muddy fields, reaping, threshing and bagging the paddy.

Abdullah Fikri Ashri

· 5 minutes read

People packed the roadside along Jl. Jagapura in Gegesik, Cirebon regency, West Java, on Monday (25/10/2021), eagerly watching the various agricultural machinery operating in the paddy fields.

Agricultural equipment and machinery were on display to commemorate the 41st World Food Day. Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo and Cirebon Deputy Regent Wahyu Tjiptaningsih even rode a rice combine harvester as it worked the fields.

At the same time, rice seeders were sowing paddy seeds at other fields. There were no more women bowing in rows, planting seedlings as they moved backward using the tandur technique, or reverse planting. It took just one man to operate the machine, which resembles a tiller.

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The local residents were even more astonished as they saw a remote-controlled drone flying at a height of 5 meters over the fields. The pilotless aircraft carried 20 liters of a biological germicide and insecticide containing organisms to combat pests and diseases that it sprayed onto the paddy.

Gunawan, an official from the Plant Pest Forecasting Center at the Karawang Agriculture Office, said the machinery significantly helped farmers with their work. “There is only one operator. The drone can spray 1 hectare of farmland in 10 minutes. Doing the work manually could take an hour,” he added.

More efficient

Muklas, 62, a farmer in Jagapura, expressed his admiration for the various agricultural technologies. He has been using a combine harvester for the past year. “It works better. The grains are all dry. If a gerabak [power thresher] is used, the paddy becomes mixed with mud,” he said.

He hires a machine for Rp 2 million to harvest paddy on a 7,000-square-meter field. “The machines are from Central Java, maybe Kudus. They come during harvest time. They can’t be found here yet,” he said.

Using the harvester, Muklas only needs three hours to harvest the paddy. It was more efficient in terms of time, labor and cost. He only needs to pay Rp 500,000 to have the sacks of grain delivered to a mill.

When he worked by hand, Muklas shelled out Rp 800,000 for workers to harvest the 7,000 sqm field, excluding meals, so the cost of harvesting totaled around Rp 1 million. He still had to set aside one-sixth of his harvest to distribute among the workers, who received 1 ton of unhusked grains out of every 6 tons of grain harvested from a 1 ha field.

“So the farmers get 5 tons. It’s fortunate if the price is high. What if it’s not?” he said.

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In early 2020 during the first rainy season, which is planting season, for instance, the price of dry grain (GKP) was Rp 3,800 per kilogram, below the government’s purchase price (HPP) of Rp 4,200 per kg of GKP.

The condition could be worse if it continues to rain. The poor irrigation system leaves submerged paddy fields. At least 5,287 ha of paddy fields in Cirebon were flooded in early 2021. As a result, the crop failed and farmers had to replant their fields.

Cirebon Deputy Regent Wahyu Tjiptaningsih said that farmers badly needed agricultural technology. Moreover, the number of workers was extremely limited during harvest season in Cirebon, so they occasionally had to hire workers from other regions. “Farmers have to wait to harvest their paddy fields. In the end, the quality of grain declines,” he said.

Wahyu expressed hope that the Agriculture Ministry would distribute agricultural machinery to farmers in Cirebon, which had an annual production capacity of around 90,000 tons of rice. The regency administration has set a production target of more than 570,000 tons of dry husked grain from a total planting area of about 93,000 hectares by 2024.

According to data from the Agriculture Ministry’s agricultural facilities and infrastructure directorate general of in 2015-2019, tens of thousands of agricultural machinery were distributed across the country. In Java, 53,558 two-wheeled tractors and 6,858 seeders were allocated to farmers.

Future of agriculture

Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo acknowledged that the distribution of agricultural technology was not yet equitable due to state budget limitations. Nevertheless, Syahrul asked his ranks to continue with adaptation practices in using agricultural technologies, including artificial intelligence like spraying fields using drones. Likewise, research should be conducted on seeds that were resistant to both the rainy and dry season. The minister voiced optimism that the future of agriculture was promising, because the sector was capable of growth even as other sectors were severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) chief representative for Indonesia and Timor Leste, Rajendral Aryal, explained that technology supported sustainable agriculture. Adopting environmentally friendly agricultural technologies would also increase productivity, he said. The more productive our agriculture sector, the less it need to expand farmland and so the environment could continue to be conserved.

This article was translated by Aris Prawira.

Editor:

Syahnan Rangkuti

world food day Food and Agriculture Organization agricultural machinery agricultural technology environmentally friendly agricultural technologies agricultural technologies future of agriculture