Jakarta (VNA) – Professor Hasil Sembiring, Special Advisor to the Indonesian Minister of Agriculture on Production Enhancement, says that Indonesia’s growing agricultural sector is creating great opportunities for collaboration with Vietnam.
Speaking at a roundtable in Jakarta on August 10, Sembiring said Vietnam and Indonesia have shared crop varieties and agricultural production experience, with Vietnam offering valuable lessons for Indonesia.
He highlighted Vietnam’s programme to develop one million hectares of high-quality, low-emission rice in the Mekong Delta, which seeks to raise productivity and reduce environmental impacts. Large-scale rice mechanisation in southern Vietnam is also a model Indonesia could learn from to reduce production costs and improve competitiveness.
According to him, the two countries have considerable room for cooperation in areas including agricultural mechanisation, short-duration rice varieties, water management, digital agriculture, post-harvest technologies, and agro-processing.
Indonesia is implementing comprehensive measures to strengthen food security and meet the needs of a large population that is growing by around 2.5 million people annually. Its agricultural transformation focuses on four major areas: reforming policies and agricultural inputs, increasing productivity and ensuring water security, developing human resources, and raising the value of agricultural products.
The country aims to ramp up domestic production of commodities with strong potential for sustainable growth, while keeping imports for items that can’t be supplied locally. It sees climate resilience as key to long-term food security, with steps like better irrigation management, improved climate data and early warnings, drought-tolerant crops, smarter fertiliser use, cutting post-harvest losses, and expanding precision and smart farming practices.
Beyond rice, Indonesia is diversifying food sources through maize, cassava, sago, sorghum, root crops, fruits and vegetables, livestock, and fisheries.
The country is calling for international cooperation in five areas: seeds; water management and renewable energy; machinery and technology; storage, processing and traceability; and financing and risk-sharing instruments for smallholder farmers and young agribusinesses, the advisor said./.
VNA
