Indonesia needs to grow more rice, corn and sugar. Can its forests survive?

JAKARTA – It’s been more than a year, and villagers from Kalumpang in Central Kalimantan are still waiting for a sign of progress from an ambitious programme to grow rice on land cleared from a nearby forest.

Roughly 200ha of “hutan galam” or galam forest, on which the villagers relied for food and raw materials, was levelled in 2025 – the trees, shrubs and soil arranged in neat rows – in service of Cetak Sawah Rakyat, a national scheme meant to support villages and promote self-sufficiency in rice production.

Kalumpang's head of governance, firefighting and societal affairs, Candra Sanjaya, is blunt about the government's stuttering efforts to boost rice production in the area. “We have not tasted even a single grain of rice from there. It is a failed project,” he said.

Satellite images from Planet Labs, a US Earth observation company, show the forest being cleared over several months, then left unused. It’s a testament to the challenge of coaxing rice to grow on peatland.

Residents had cultivated the land – planting rubber trees, rattan and oil palm for many of the roughly 500 households in the village – even though they held no title to it. The land belonged to the government and was classified to allow its clearing for agriculture.

“They started huge and failed huge. This doesn't make sense. This ‘hutan galam’ is a main source of our livelihood,” said kindergarten teacher Rica Kosmirawaty.

The programme is emblematic of Indonesia’s decades of troubled food estate programmes, which have largely failed to deliver the hoped-for massive boost in crop production and have instead caused large-scale deforestation – and increased the risk of fires.

Kalumpang village is near the largest of these failed programmes – the Mega Rice Project, launched by president Suharto in 1995 to convert more than one million ha of tropical peat swamp forest in Central Kalimantan into rice paddies.

The scheme was abandoned three years later after producing virtually no rice. It caused massive deforestation and drained deep peatlands, leaving them vulnerable to fire.

Describing the ecological consequences of the project, peatland-focused non-governmental organisation Pantau Gambut said: “Fires consumed at least 730,000ha of forest and peatland in 1997-1998, an area equivalent to 11 times the size of Jakarta.”

Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate in 2010 in South Papua, with the vision of creating a vast “breadbasket” for Indonesia producing rice, corn, soya bean, sugar and palm oil. But poor soil conditions, costly water drainage and resistance from local communities stalled the project, even as former president Joko Widodo tried to revive it.

President Prabowo Subianto is pursuing even more ambitious plans for Indonesia. The government has allocated millions of hectares of forest land for food, energy and water self-sufficiency programmes, including restarting the construction of large-scale food estates in South Papua.

“No nation can be free if it cannot provide food for its people. A nation cannot be independent if its food supply depends on other countries,” Prabowo said in a speech at the start of 2026 to mark the domestic production of a large rice surplus in 2025, a milestone after years of rice imports.

The government says it is committed to maintaining consistent production and expanding self-sufficiency to other strategic commodities, including corn and sugar, both of which it still needs to import.

But to achieve its goals, swathes of natural and protected forests will be converted to boost domestic biofuel and food production. For instance, to cut fuel imports, the government wants to ramp up sugar production to produce ethanol, while more palm oil is needed to blend with diesel.

“Why is Indonesia still bulldozing rainforests and peatlands to make industrial food production work on this scale after so many failures?” said Glenn Hurowitz, founder and chief executive of global environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth.

To achieve his aims of self-sufficiency, Prabowo has deployed thousands of police and soldiers, creating Territorial Infantry Battalions, to clear land, plant crops and build infrastructure such as roads and drainage canals.

Indonesia needs to grow more food to meet the needs of its rapidly growing population of 285 million people. Being as self-sufficient as possible not only reduces exposure to geopolitical shocks, such as external conflicts, but can also bolster the economy. Prabowo sees food and energy self-sufficiency as key to achieving his goal of 8 per cent annual economic growth.

To slash diesel imports, for instance, the government on July 1, 2026, fast-tracked its B50 biodiesel mandate, shifting from a 40 per cent palm oil-based biodiesel (B40) to a 50 per cent blend. The new mix is set to be at fuel pumps by Oct 1, 2026.

Resilience is the priority, Dwi Anggia, spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, told a recent gathering of foreign correspondents, saying: “Every nation has its own policy to fulfil energy self-sufficiency amid the current geopolitical situation.”

Indonesia could save 170 trillion rupiah (S$12.25 billion) annually by halting diesel imports and using domestic biofuel instead, she said.

Despite the laudable goals of the Prabowo government, scientists and conservationists are concerned that past mistakes may be repeated in the scale of the projects.

“We can see the importance of food and energy security programmes. However, the implementation so far is worrying, both conceptually, environmentally and socially,” said Timer Manurung, chairman of Auriga Nusantara, a think-tank focusing on forestry and biodiversity in Indonesia.

The deployment of thousands of soldiers has already led to accusations of rights abuses and illegal appropriation of land in South Papua province, where vast rice and sugar food estates are being developed in fragile wetland forests, triggering conflict with local communities. If fully developed, Auriga estimates these estates could cover about two million ha, roughly the size of the state of Johor.

“Sending thousands of soldiers to work on a massive agricultural development project that the private sector wouldn’t do alone seems like it would be an enormous pressure on Indonesia’s budget at a time they can ill afford it,” said Hurowitz.

It would also destroy the most intact rainforest in South-east Asia, he told The Straits Times.

Deforestation worsens the impacts of climate change by raising local temperatures, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing water flows into rivers, making the land more vulnerable to drought and fires.

This means large-scale food estates of the sort being developed in South Papua and envisaged elsewhere by the Prabowo government are not the best solution, said Herry Purnomo, Indonesia country director for the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor.

The government would do better focusing on smaller-scale programmes that involve local communities, which have experience in those, he told ST.

The government has three main self-sufficiency programmes.

“These programmes can potentially bring nearly 10 million ha of deforestation,” Timer told ST.

Deforestation is already on the rise as a result of the self-sufficiency drive and is exacerbated by weak environmental protections, said Auriga.

It estimates that forest loss in Indonesia surged by 66 per cent in 2025, hitting its highest rate in eight years.

A total of 433,751ha of forest was cleared in 2025, compared with 261,575ha in 2024, based on high-resolution imagery and Auriga’s own visits to forest areas across 16 provinces.

More than 78,000ha, roughly the size of Singapore, was linked to the food and energy self-sufficiency programmes, Auriga said.

The spike in forest loss in 2025 is an ominous signal for what might come, Timer said.

“What worries me the most is the fact that most of the deforestation in 2025 – 58 per cent – could be legal,” he said, meaning it was approved by the government for existing plantation and mining concessions or urban expansion.

Between 2001 and 2025, permanent deforestation has been dominantly driven by agriculture.

He pointed to a lack of protections, weak enforcement and poor planning.

Some 41.6 million ha, or 44 per cent, of Indonesia’s natural forest cover is not legally protected, making it vulnerable to clearing. For example, large areas of forest are outside national parks and designated conservation areas.

“There is no indication of improving the legal standard for protecting the forests. Because of this, we expect the rate of deforestation across Indonesia to remain high until 2029,” Timer said, which is the end of Prabowo’s current term.

“There is also weak planning of the government’s national strategic projects in which food and energy security programmes are included,” he added. For instance, some land being cleared, such as deep peatland with acidic soils, is unsuitable for rice cultivation.

The government says it remains committed to protecting forest areas of high ecological value.

Ristianto Pribadi, head of public relations and international cooperation at the forestry ministry, told ST the government views food security, energy security and forest preservation not as mutually conflicting objectives.

“For this reason, any use of forest areas continues to adhere to the principles of precaution, sustainability and compliance with laws and regulations,” he said.

He said that while 20.6 million ha has been identified for the main food and energy estate programme, they must still be verified as suitable and meeting all environmental and licensing requirements.

“The figure does not imply that the entire area will be opened up or developed,” he added.

Still, the worry about deforestation remains. From 2001 to 2024, Indonesia lost 32 million ha of tree cover, producing 23 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) think-tank.

Overall, Indonesia still has the world’s third-largest remaining area of tropical rainforest, but has suffered widespread forest loss in recent decades, particularly in Sumatra and Kalimantan, mainly due to agriculture and mining.

The worry about crop production is also acute, not only for the government, but also for farmers.

The area under rice cultivation has been shrinking due to urban and industrial development, a growing population and climate change, which made some areas unsuitable for rice cultivation. A 2026 study found that the rice cultivation area had been shrinking by about 90,000ha a year prior to 2025.

In 2025, however, Indonesian government figures show the paddy harvested area jumped by 1.27 million ha to 11.32 million ha, compared with 2024. This was due in part to the food self-sufficiency programme expanding to new parts of the country, such as Central Kalimantan and South Papua, favourable weather, plus additional support for fertilisers, water pumps and other machinery.

While a positive development, questions remain about whether the scale of this annual increase can be sustained without continued deforestation.

And demand for rice will only keep growing.

“By 2050, Indonesia's population is projected to reach 321 million people. Assuming annual per capita rice consumption remains at approximately 127kg, the country would need to produce at least 40.8 million tonnes of rice to meet domestic demand,” said Romauli Panggabean, an environmental economist, at WRI Indonesia.

That represents a significant jump from national rice production of 34.71 million tonnes in 2025. Given that overall productivity per ha has barely risen over the past decade, growing demand will put further pressure on the government to boost production in order to permanently end imports.

Demand is also growing for corn, sugar and other crops. Indonesia grows an abundance of food, such as cassava, sorghum and potatoes, though it has to import wheat and soya.

In Central Kalimantan, ST saw mixed results in the Cetak Sawah Rakyat programme, which has helped farmers with irrigation infrastructure, land clearing and preparation and mechanisation.

In areas where the peat was shallow, farmers achieved high yields of about six tonnes per hectare, exceeding the national average of about 5.3 tonnes per hectare.

Rafii Abdul Sani, 50, a farmer in Punai village, Kapuas regency, said the government helped prepare several hectares of family land for rice farming.

“The government cleared the land and built the access road and the irrigation system for us last year, from March to December.”

This enabled him to bring in farming equipment and transport his harvest, which is due in September. He is hopeful it will be good, judging by the condition of the paddy field.

The state also gave the village hand tractors, rice transplanters, high-yielding seed, herbicides and dolomite, a mineral mix to improve the soil.

Farmers taking part in Cetak Sawah Rakyat receive operating funds covering part of the cost of cultivation through to harvest, said Rafii.

He has welcomed the help. "This will be a good legacy for my children. It will keep producing, and the harvests will get better in the future."

Another rice farmer, Maryoto Madioarjo, 35, from Tahai Baru village in Pulang Pisau regency, said the military dredged silted canals and installed pipes and a sluice gate, helping him better control water levels for his rice fields.

The access road built by the government also boosted his takings, because traders can now bring trucks in and load in bulk, cutting logistics costs.

Other farmers were not as lucky because the peat soil was too acidic for rice growing or the water-control infrastructure was inadequate.

Mahyudi Rane, 65, from Tajipan village in Kapuas regency, said the local farmers' group attempted to grow rice a few times, but was unsuccessful due to drainage issues.

Mahyudi's farmland, and his neighbour’s, sit roughly 20m from a local river, but the polder built by the government to drain water away when the river rose was too small to handle the volumes.

"We tried in 2021, 2022 and 2023, in different months each year, hoping for success. But each time it failed. The paddies were always flooded,” he said.

Land suitability is one of the most important factors in the success of programmes like Cetak Sawah Rakyat, said Dede Sulaeman, research lead for peatland monitoring at WRI Indonesia.

But it’s not the only one, he noted. “Successful agricultural development also depends on many other factors, such as effective water management, adequate infrastructure, ongoing support for farmers and proper long-term maintenance.”

Budget is a common constraint, said Akhmad Rizalli Saidy, dean of the agriculture faculty at South Kalimantan’s Lambung Mangkurat University.

He shared a recent case in Kalimantan, where technical assessment called for a 1.5m embankment given the size and flow of the adjacent river, but the government negotiated it down to 1m to stay within budget, since it also targeted embankments at other sites.

“When the river’s tidal surge arrived, the 1m embankment was not enough and the rice fields were submerged,” he said.

By far the most controversial of Prabowo’s food estate initiatives is in South Papua in Merauke regency, near the border with Papua New Guinea.

It’s a remote region of lowland forests and wetlands that indigenous communities rely on for food and an important part of their culture. The area has long been a target for Indonesian governments because of its vast, mostly flat landscape.

Development began in 2010 but repeatedly stalled. In 2023, it was relaunched by former president Jokowi as a national strategic project, which allowed fast-tracked approvals.

Within weeks of taking office in October 2024, Prabowo travelled to the area to promote the development of what he hopes will finally become a vast agricultural estate – succeeding where others failed.

The most controversial rice and sugarcane concessions are in South Papua

But the past failures were due to the fact that food was never grown on the cleared land.

“The last Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate in 2011 became a textbook land grab, used as cover to establish oil palm and pulpwood plantations instead. Now, Prabowo is throwing everything at the current project,” Hurowitz said, expressing concerns about how the land is being acquired and damage to fragile forest areas.

Two Indonesian companies – the Jhonlin Group, headed by palm oil magnate Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad, also known as Haji Isam; and Merauke Sugar Group, owned by the family of Martias Fangiono – are developing huge concessions for rice and sugar.

The Jhonlin Group bought 2,000 land excavators from Chinese company Sany at a cost of US$250 million (S$316 million) to clear land and dig irrigation channels.

Thousands of military personnel are helping to clear the swampy lands and forcibly acquire land, according to witness accounts. So far, both firms have cleared 48,970ha of land, according to satellite data from Mighty Earth as at April 15, 2026.

“The local communities are really clear that they don’t want this project,” said Hurowitz.

Residents have staged protests, filed complaints in Merauke town and in Jakarta and tried to block heavy machinery, including heavily guarded bulldozers.

Pictures and drone videos taken by Mighty Earth show expanses of recently cleared wetlands arranged into large rectangles in preparation for rice planting, with canals built to drain the land. Excavators and bulldozers can also be seen clearing a forest, while in other shots, a river port is shown under construction.

In March 2025, nine UN special rapporteurs expressed deep concerns over the impacts of the Merauke food and energy zone on the rights of the local communities. They highlighted denial of customary land rights, severe environmental degradation, lack of community participation in decision-making and allegations of intimidation against local people and civil society by the military.

“The indigenous communities are reportedly facing intimidation and criminalisation, with a high presence of military personnel in the region supporting companies in clearing forest lands,” they said in a letter to the government.

In response, the Indonesian government said the rights of all citizens were protected and that the implementation of the project complied with national and international law.

There are also questions about the suitability of the land in Merauke, some of which are peatlands and not ideal for rice or sugar. And culturally, Papuans do not grow rice or sugar cane, which could necessitate massive importation of labour from other parts of the country, Purnomo from CIFOR said.

“The Papua people don’t have the culture of farming like this,” he noted. Working successfully with them is a long process, and not a matter of creating a million hectares of croplands this year or next, he said.

Clearing on such a vast scale will also release hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases, jeopardising the government’s climate pledge for the forestry and land-use sector to absorb more carbon than it emits by 2030, he said.

It also undermines government efforts to pressure palm oil and pulpwood companies to end deforestation and clearance of flammable peatlands following devastating fires in 2015 and 2016.

The Jokowi administration enacted a permanent ban on new permits for clearing primary natural forests and carbon-rich peatlands for logging, palm oil and pulpwood concessions and invested in equipment and training in wildfire prevention.

These steps helped reduce deforestation.

Primary forest loss, including from fires, plunged from more than 900,000ha in 2016 to less than 400,000ha in 2017 and has remained under 400,000ha since then, according to data from WRI’s Global Forest Watch programme.

“Indonesia has proven models that can increase agricultural production while protecting forests, but in the South Papua project they’re not learning from their own success,” Hurowitz said.

There are more sustainable solutions for attaining affordable, reliable and accessible food sources for the country, observers said.

One key measure already under way is to increase rice yields on existing farmland, with Java’s fertile rice fields a prime example.

To the east of Jakarta lie the emerald-green rice fields of Karawang regency, a vast expanse tended by farmers who own small plots of 1ha to 2ha each.

Java still grows the majority of Indonesia’s rice, with farmers drawing on generations of knowledge to cultivate two or three crops a year, relying on rainwater, irrigation, fertilisers and even ducks to eat pests.

It is here, in the millions of hectares of carefully cultivated and sculpted rice fields, that Indonesia can further boost rice production without resorting to large-scale deforestation elsewhere, experts say.

“Prabowo’s close attention to agriculture deserves appreciation. The food security programme does, however, need fine-tuning: We should intensify and raise the productivity of existing farmland rather than opening up more,” said Elia Azizah, deputy dean of the agriculture faculty at the Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang.

Indonesian company Eratani is focused on achieving exactly this. It is working with more than 45,000 rice farmers in Java and Sulawesi, covering over 21,000ha and more than 500 villages, to help them boost yields and incomes from existing rice fields.

“Rather than clearing or opening new land, Indonesia must intensify production in its main rice-producing regions – Java, Sulawesi and Sumatra – by substantially increasing yields on existing farmland,” says co-founder Bambang Cahyo Susilo, Eratani’s chief financial and operations officer. “This is essential for the country to achieve and sustain food self-sufficiency.”

Eratani is a for-profit firm that buys rice directly from the farmers, cutting out the middleman. It works directly with farmers to give them access to finance, crop insurance, chemicals and equipment, seedlings and agronomists for advice and training.

It works with financial institutions, insurance firms, fertiliser and chemical companies, and machinery suppliers, such as electric sprayers.

“Access to finance remains one of the most significant challenges facing smallholder farmers in Indonesia,” said Bambang. Apart from seeds, fertilisers and equipment, farmers need financing to adopt new farming practices.

Eratani is working with farmers on a method of growing rice that produces less methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and uses less water.

Temasek Foundation supports Eratani’s work to help farmers transition to low-emission rice cultivation by lowering farming costs, increasing incomes and improving access to crop insurance, affordable financing and market linkages.

For example, if a farmer experiences a harvest failure and the insurance company rejects the claim, he may be able to obtain philanthropic co-funding from Eratani and the Temasek Foundation as an additional safety net, using it to repay the bank loan, said Bambang.

These layers of support mean farmers have a lower credit risk, allowing them to borrow more cheaply.

For Temasek Foundation, Eratani’s work dovetails with its goal of supporting sustainable agriculture and rice production that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption.

“This partnership with Eratani is part of Temasek Foundation’s broader commitment to strengthen environmental resilience and address urgent global climate challenges across Asia,” said Heng Li Lang, head of climate and liveability at Temasek Foundation.

During a recent visit to Kalisari village in Karawang regency, farmer Muhammad Nur told ST that he benefits from Eratani’s pesticides, which are sprayed by a drone – a 15-minute job.

Normally he spends 150,000 rupiah hiring two people for half a day to do the spraying, a process repeated six times during each planting cycle. Eratani also checks the soil's acidity and adds corrective chemicals when the soil becomes too acidic.

“We expect to raise our yield to above six tonnes per hectare, from five tonnes now,” Nur said.

Java supplies 60 per cent of Indonesia's rice, Bambang said during the visit. “There is still ample room to improve. Research into better seed strains alone could raise yields by 30 per cent,” he added.

Using degraded land is another solution that does not require deforestation.

“There are many, many degraded lands. Why don’t we focus on boosting production there on a small scale and try to work with local organisations, local governments?” said Purnomo.

WRI Indonesia recently completed an analysis and identified 9.72 million ha of degraded but still productive non-peatland areas.

“Using degraded lands that are still productive could significantly reduce forest clearing,” said Hidayah Hamzah, senior manager for forest and peat monitoring at WRI.

WRI says a large portion of the degraded lands are small areas suitable for community development.

Less than 10 per cent of the 9.72 million ha is suitable for large-scale agriculture expansion, whereas about 4.1 million ha is suitable for small-scale agriculture of less than 100ha.

“The distribution of the degraded land suggests a strong opportunity for developing decentralised, community-driven agricultural projects that can enhance local food security and livelihoods,” Hidayah said.

Community-based food estates and agroforestry systems, such as social forestry, support rural livelihoods, biodiversity and carbon storage, she added.

Indonesia has been shifting towards a model of social forestry that aims to reduce rural poverty, halt deforestation and resolve land conflicts by granting local and indigenous communities legal access to manage state forestlands.

The government says it has made available 8.4 million ha of social forestry land to more than 1.4 million households.

Land can be used to grow a mix of trees for timber, as well as crops such as rice, cloves, coconut, corn, sago and coffee. The wider benefits for national food security, however, are more nuanced, Hidayah said.

“Social forestry has opened up opportunities for communities to manage forest land and improve their livelihoods. But it’s important to remember that only certain crops can be grown under these schemes, as the main objective is still to maintain forest functions,” she said.

Going forward, a third solution to food security could be to diversify key crops beyond rice, corn and sugar to, for instance, cassava, sago and sorghum production, traditional crops long grown in the country.

The deep dependence on rice, especially on production in Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, leaves other parts of the country dependent on imports from these islands.

“It is important to encourage Indonesians to diversify their diets based on locally produced foods. The objective is not to eliminate rice from the national diet, but to ensure that a greater share of food consumption is sourced locally, reflecting the comparative advantages and food resources available in each region,” said Romauli from WRI.

Elia from Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang agreed, saying that the government needs to do more to promote food diversification, which itself is quintessentially Indonesian.

“Root crops – cassava, sweet potato, potato and taro – were our staple foods in the old days, before the Chinese and Indians introduced us to rice,” she said.

“Many then switched to rice, not realising that tubers actually carry better nutrients and are far kinder to people with diabetes, since rice is high in starch.”

Purnomo said he hopes the food estate programme can be constantly refined and that the Prabowo government will learn from the mistakes of previous administrations.

It needs to be realistic, he said. “Even if supported by the army, it will not work if the scale is not appropriate, the climate and soil conditions are not good enough, or people lose their land. It is not sustainable.”