I spent almost 3 years in an institution where all the lecturers and professors talked almost all the time about the importance of the agricultural sector for food security.
How important food security strategies as basic needs, fisheries and livestock development, community nutrition, and preserving the environment, food resiliency management, land use, and community empowerment.
Majoring in regional development management, the discussion revolved around the regional government policies such as rural and urban, agricultural sector, concerns over the massive land conversion due to population growth, the lack of interest in young people to work in the agricultural sector, limited land, limited food resources, to food safety.
It was a very interesting discourse, but at that time I did not really into it since I had worked as an export facilitator that more concerned in developing exports commodity for my thesis, to improve the welfare of farmers and developing the business as a whole thus providing an impact on the regional economy.
Recently, The World Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated that the corona pandemic could have an impact on food scarcity. This is due to land conversion that continues to occur.
In Indonesia, data from the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning / National Land Agency (ATR / BPN) stated that agricultural land was reduced by 287 thousand hectares during 2013-2019.
The urban poor and those who lived in the minus areas are starting to have difficulty accessing food during the pandemic, when in fact community needs for nutritious food is increase significantly as the World Health Organization (WHO) outlines that good nutrition is crucial for humans' immune system and protection against diseases.
The Jakarta Post reported on Wednesday, April 29, 2020, that more farmers from villages help cities ensure food supply during the pandemic. The farmer association in Kulon Progo sent pickup trucks full of vegetables and rice to Yogjakarta to help the poor and those who had lost their income during the pandemic.
In this time of pandemic the rural help the urban. The same farmers that are now reported still battling corporations against land conversion.
Now that food scarcity in some areas arising, foods and logistical distributions becoming an extremely crucial matter while many people in quarantine started to cry out of hunger.
All these things about food needs and scarcity in a country known as an agricultural remind me of how my lecturers and professors all the time yell out that agriculture and food sector policies as primary needs from production, storage, to distribution are still inadequate and half-hearted, defeated by industrial expansion and construction projects.