Sustainable Food Systems in Indonesia

Indonesia is working to develop its agriculture, with a strong focus on food production and food self-suffciency. The government of Indonesia (GoI) developed a set of policies called Four Ways of Action. The four priorities are: increasing food production capacity, local food diversification, strengthening the food reserves and logistics system and development of modern agriculture.

Since April 2020, the GoI discussed establishing several food production areas so called food estates. At the end of 2020, the GoI identified two locations: Central Kalimantan (focusing on rice production) and North Sumatera (focusing on horticulture and Horti seeds production). Both are included in the National Strategic Program.

Especially the location in North Sumatra is of interest for the Netherlands. Recently, the GoI has started to develop thousands of hectares farmland in North Sumatra for the production of shallots, garlic, and potatoes and their derivative products. The GoI inspected the location of the next food estate development in Sumba island, East Nusa Tenggara. Indonesia has indicated that it wants to develop the food estates in a sustainable way and asked the Netherlands for support.

This project aims to start the policy dialogue with Indonesia on national and local level, to provide insight into how sustainability, climate smart and circular agriculture fits within the National Strategic Program and food system approach and to develop a strategy together with Indonesia. This project is a follow up of the trade mission during the state visit in March 2020 and the late April mission to North Sumatra. During those missions, food systems were discussed and the GoI asked the Netherlands for help to implement this.