Agricom.id, JAKARTA - Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo (SYL) took the universities and campus in Indonesia to expose innovations in technology base to increase and strengthen food productivity nationally.

He thought, every innovation is the potential future to hire many workers and increase the economy nationally.

“I always tell that agriculture is the place to work. The farmers’ exchange rate (FER) always increases when the people’s buying capability decreases. It means, if something develops, there should be intervention, for instance, is it the seed, or medicine, or mechanic?” he said in Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB) International Convention Center, Bogor, West Java, Thursday (27/5/2021), as in the official statement to Agricom.id.

He also mentioned that the universities have the big contribution to advance the agriculture in Indonesia. He also hoped, they would massively contribute to the agriculture. Every campus should develop certain variety to be the mainstay and could have twice productivity.

He also said, every campus could have better paddy variety, corn, and other plantations. The government would encourage the mechanism to strengthen local food security and could expand nationally.

“IPB, 15 campuses and I would always do dialogue about optimization of every available potential. We have to increase food production to strengthen the economy and food security,” he said.

For information, Ministry of Agriculture is focusing to monitor 12 strategic commodities to supply foods for 270 million citizens of Indonesia. They are paddy, corn, soybean, onion, garlic, big chili, cayenne pepper, cow/buffalo meat, hen meat, egg, sugar, and cooking oil.

“What we know is that 12 commodities show the positive ones. It means, the food needs in Indonesia are guarantee from the numbers of supply in each region,” he said.

General Director of Food Plantation Ministry of Agriculture, Suwandi said, agricultural innovation needs further development to make Indonesia have fiiid sovereignty and independency.

“We have to cooperate together and do research to every commodity,” he said.

Knowing this, Director of IPB, Arif Satria said, agricultural innovation developed by universities would develop better. The innovations are technology and science oriented.

“Hopefully the innovations produced by university could make something in science – base. We have varieties in each campus. It is about the development. We need synergy, for instance, we need sophisticated laboratory in like what Ministry of Agriculture belongs," he said.

He hoped, the research and innovation of the campus could be better, have fantastic productivity to advance the agriculture in Indonesia. “I do hope, the available researches could be better and productive to advance our future agriculture,” he said. (A2)