Agri Minister Establishes Integrated Posts to Tackle Drought
August 10, 2015
The Agriculture Ministry has opened up interagency integrated posts to tackle drought that is predicted to occur until the end of this year.
According to Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman, crop failure threatens hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice fields. “Coordination meeting of establishment of posts is currently undergoing,” said Amran on Monday.
The opening of the posts involves the police, the TNI, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), the National Logistics Agency (Bulog), the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry, the Trade Ministry and the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.
Amran said every 200,000 hectares are under threat of crop failure. The Agriculture Ministry has been building tertiary irrigation network to irrigate fields of 1.3 million hectares since December 2014.
The number of water pumps have also been added in regions with large potential as producer of crops, such as rice, corn and soybean.
Around 300 units of water pumps were given to Bojonegoro Regency, East Java, to irrigate 10,000 hectares of lands, while around 327 pumps were given to several regions in Central Java which are Demak Regency, Pati and Grobokan.
Meanwhile, two regions in West Java; Cirebon and Indramayu received aid of two units of large water pumps that can absorb water from large rivers that are not far from fields of 11,000 hectares.
Amran explained that other sources of water are 1,000 shallow wells built in 28 villages. One well can irrigate land of 15 hectares.
Source: en.tempo.co
