Badung Optimizes Farmers` Role To Achieve Food Self-Suffiency

Mangupura (Antara Bali) - Badung District, Bali province, is optimizing the role of its farmers in an effort to achieve food self-suffiency, a regional official said.

"The role of farmers is very strategic in maintaining food resilience towards achieving food self-sufficiency," IGA Sudaratmaja, head of Badung`s Agriculture Service, said here on Sunday.

Apart from the central role of farmers, food resilience and self-sufficiency also depend on the width of rice farms, land conversion, production in facing whether/pest conditions and the increasing number of population, said Sudaratmaja.

Badung district is one of Bali`s rice production centers. Based on data at the Central Bureaus of Statistics (BPS), the district produced 64,517 tons of rice in 2016.

Consumption and stocks of rice needed for 630 thousand population in Badung reached 74,313 tons per annum. This means that Badung was in deficit of rice by 13.6 percent in 2016.

However, data at the Population and Civil Records Service of Badung indicated that Badung`s population was only 464,600 so that there was a rice surplus of 5,400 tons per annum, or about 8.3 percent.

In the meantime, the administration of Badung is designing tours in synergy with traditional agriculture, which is called agro-tourism, aimed at increasing the income of local farmers in the area.

"We want to build contemporary agriculture, which is in synergy with tourism, with a hope of increasing the income of farmers in Badung," the Head of Badung administration, I Nyoman Giri Prasta, said here on Wednesday (April 12).

The agro-tourism design is expected to create a new travel experience for visitors, in addition to increasing the agricultural production.
The synergy of the two sectors will generate better income for farmers from both tourism and agricultural sectors.

"The agro-tourism will offer views and opinions for farmers while plowing paddy fields as well as boost the agricultural panorama," he remarked.

Giri Prasta noted that the agricultural products produced by the farmers in Badung will be promoted and sold online.

Badung district has approximately 280 thousand people, with an average density of 672 people per square kilometer.

Tourism sector in the district is supported by agriculture and industries, especially the home and small-scale industries. (WDY)