The Ministry of Agriculture is targeting to produce one million tons of soybeans this year in order to meet the national soybean requirements to cut dependeance on imported supply.

Director of Various Nuts and Tubers of the Directorate General of Food Crops at the Ministry of Agriculture Yuris Tiyanto stated that the production target will be realized through planting soybeans on 650 thousand hectares of land in 14 Indonesian provinces.

"Our Directorate has striven to increase the soybean production. We have provided assistance to farmers covering an area of 52 thousand hectares through the State Budget (APBN) to plant soybeans," Tiyanto remarked on Tuesday.

With a target to plant soybean in 650 thousand hectares of land by 2022, the remaining 598 thousand hectares will be financed through the People's Business Credit (KUR), he noted.

Tiyanto later affirmed that soybean planting on an area of land spanning 52 thousand hectares had begun in January 2022, while soybean would be planted in the remaining 600 thousand hectares of land from April to October 2022.


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The 650 thousand hectares of land is a monoculture area that already exists, and soybean planting will be conducted to achieve the 2022 production target, he noted.

In addition to using the existing land, the strategy to increase soybean production is implemented by applying the intercropping technique: planting two types of plants on the same plot of land.

"We also plan to try multiple cropping on one land. We begin to plant corn first and then after harvesting corn, we will plant soybeans, which means we will use corn fields to plant soybean as well. In this project, we will use two strategies, monoculture and multiple cropping," Tiyanto explained.

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He affirmed that the domestic soybean production target is becoming the government's medium- to long-term focus and has failed to address the issue of current high prices of imported soybeans.

Tiyanto is optimistic that the plan to plant soybeans on 650 thousand hectares of land is the foundation to help Indonesia meet the domestic soybean requirements.

ANTARA(2022, February 22). Agriculture Ministry targets to produce one million tons of soybeans. ANTARA. https://en.antaranews.com/news/216521/agriculture-ministry-targets-to-produce-one-million-tons-of-soybeans