Merauke estate ‘may threaten’ local stocks, livelihoods

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Jakarta Post | Mon, 06/13/2011

Elly Burhaini Faizal, The Jakarta Post

The food estate policy that has encouraged foreign investment in agriculture may not prevent potential food crises, activists say.

Mohamad Teguh Surya, head of the international affairs and climate justice department at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said the government’s idea to establish the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) under the policy would not end food crises because it disregarded rights of indigenous people on their land and resources needed to cope with their livelihoods.

“We can achieve food security by allocating more resources for small local food producers instead of giving generous approvals on food production to private entities,” Teguh told journalists during a Walhi discussion on food security.

Food estate policy has been the government’s key program in securing local food stocks amid the growing uncertainty over global supply.

The idea of the MIFEE program was started when Merauke Regent John Gluba Gebze initiated the establishment of the Merauke Integrated Rice Estate (MIRE) in 2007 after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited and made an appeal to make Merauke a national rice barn.

The program allows up to 49 percent foreign investment in local plantations but has no requirement of securing a certain amount of crops for local needs.

Teguh said that instead of empowering small local food producers, the MIFEE project initiated by the government has ignored the rights of local people and their own local food patterns.

“Thousands of hectares of forests rich in sago and other staple foods have been chopped down for the project and replaced by industrial plants, such as oil palm, or foods such as rice and corn for commercial purposes,” said Teguh.

As of February, the Merauke regency Regional Investment Coordinating Board (BKPMD) recorded that 46 companies already have licenses needed to develop agricultural businesses in the MIFEE project, such as oil palm, sugarcane, corn and other staple foods, as well as fisheries.

Yohannes Petrus Kamarka, a member of Malind tribe in Merauke, said that few approaches had been made by the government to introduce its plans concerning the Merauke food estate to local people.

“We have had only several short meetings with officials from the district office telling us that the project is important for the sake of our prosperity,” Kamarka told The Jakarta Post.

Kamarka said for local communities in Merauke, it seems that little prosperity will soon emerge with the existence of a food estate in their areas because it will occupy thousands of hectares of forestland.

“We really depend upon on resources in forests and wetlands for our livelihoods, but they will soon diminish as the project begins operations,” he said, adding that vast exploitation of forests areas might also destroy a wide range of biodiversity in Merauke.

The MIFEE program is projected to be located on about 2.5 million hectares of area, comprising 1.9 million hectares of wetlands and 0.6 million hectares of dry land.

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