Of Supertoy and social engineering

Infrastructure – and not fancy hybrid rice varieties – is the answer to improving rice production
Khudori, Today Online 13 Sep 08;

THE Supertoy project has caused such a fiasco in the presidential palace, as well as among the Indonesian people. A similar fiasco broke out four months ago, too, thanks to the ambitious Blue Energy project, which was purported to change water into alternative fuel.

A factory was built in Cikeas, Bogor, near where President Yudhoyono resides. A grand plan was then designed. This great invention was to be officially announced by the President himself during the 100th anniversary of the national awakening on May 20. Yet, the waiting continued, and still the water-fuel had not materialised. What had really happened? There’s no need to discuss it further, because it’s just too embarrassing. I mean, how is it possible to easily turn water into fuel?

One thing is for sure: Mr Djoko Suprapto, the “inventor” of Blue Energy, is now a suspect for fraud.

But the whole Blue Energy debacle was barely over when the Supertoy debacle emerged. Here was another dream, a new super-variety of rice. Inventor Tuyung Supriyadi claimed that Supertoy was the result from cross-breeding the Rojolele and the Pandan Wangi grains and has super ability.

He said Supertoy could be harvested three times a year without any need to plant new seeds, with a total harvest of 15 tonnes of hulled rice per hectare. But that claim was bogus. Around 500 of Purworejo farmers demanded 22.6 billion rupiah ($3.4 million) in compensation from PT Sarana Harapan Indopangan, Supertoy’s investor, because of the failed harvest. The President’s name was once again in the spotlight.

He was seen to have promoted both those projects. In the Supertoy project, the President even joined in the celebration of the first harvest in Grabag village, Sukoharjo, his wife’s home village.

There are similarities between the two projects: First, Blue Energy and Supertoy were endorsed by companies owned by the same person, Heru Lelono, one of the President’s special staff. Supertoy was endorsed by Sarana Harapan Indopangan, while Blue Energy was promoted by Sarana Harapan Indohidro, both of which come under the flag of Sarana Harapan Indogrup (SHI). Heru Lelono is the executive commissioner of SHI.

Second, the President had paid special attention to both projects, even though official research institutions such as The National Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), or the research division at the Agriculture Department had never conducted any scientific assessments.

Third, both of the projects are failures. In the world of science, failures are normal. There is always a long process of trial-and-error which needs to be continually performed by competent, certified institutions. Only once trials are successful can the experiment be good enough to publicise. In Supertoy’ case, the trial-and-error process had only reached the third filial; normally, a new variety would only be considered super after 7-8 filials. The project had taken a shortcut of procedures.

Super rice and its hybrids

The role of private companies, or anybody involved in engineering new varieties of “super rice” must be appreciated. In agriculture, when attempts to extend the land cease, super rice seeds are the way to increase production. Without a new variety of super rice, increased inputs would not give significant gains in production. That is why Thailand, China, India, the Philippines and Vietnam are seriously conducting research in order to find new variants of super rice.

Those countries are focusing on producing hybrid rice. China is far more advanced: developing super-hybrid rice with a yield of 11.4–12.6 tonnes per hectare. Hybrid rice was first developed in China in 1976. Now, there are more than 15 million hectares of hybrid rice farmland in the country. India followed in 1994. India has planted 1.2 millions hectares of farmland with it, and aims to have 10 million hectares of it by 2010.

The adoption of hybrid rice in India was quickly spread out because the government was working hand-in-hand with universities. The Philippines targeted that its hybrid rice reach 600,000 hectares in 2010. Vietnam is now working on shrinking the number of farmland to 4 million hectares. They are pushing the research on hybrid rice to become the second rice exporter in the world. Indonesia refuses to be left behind.

The development of hybrid rice was initiated in 1985 by the Food Crops Research Centre in Bogor and the first planting began in 2001. Currently, 31 varieties of rice hybrid have been released in Indonesia. Six of those variants — namely, Maro, Rokan, Hipa 3, Hipa 4, Hipa 5 Ceva and Hipa 6 Jete — were produced by the government’s research institutions and the rest were produced by private seed companies, though their contributions are not significant. The experiment with hybrid rice in Sumatra only resulted in 4-5 tonnes of dry, hulled rice per hectare, which is equal to the result from a regular variety.

In Java, the average productivity is6.6 tonnes of hulled rice per hectare, similar to the production of the regular variety in optimal conditions. Even then, the rice does not taste as good and is more sensitive to vermin and bacterial leaf infections.

Research is not the only answer

Even though it has been produced en masse, the hybrid rice contribution in china is only 10 per cent of total production. The rice production capacity of both hybrid and non-hybrid rice in China can reach 6.19 tonnes of hulled rice per hectare, with Japan at 6.31 tonnes, Korea at 6.47 tonnes, Indonesia at 4.54 tonnes and Thailand at 2.63 tonnes, because 97 per cent of the farmlands have proper irrigation.

Japan and South Korea have the same level of productivity. The productivity in Thailand is low because most of the farmland there is not yet irrigated properly. Thailand could have been the biggest rice exporter in the world, because it has a large farming land per population. Thailand’s land per capita measures 2,600 sq m, compared to China (1,000 sq m), America (7,000 sq m), and Indonesia (350 sq m). In Indonesia, there are 11 million hectares of farmland about less than half are technically irrigated.

In Indonesia, there are 20 million hectares of potential farming land in total, and only 8 million hectares are used. From the 20 million hectares, only 12 per cent is really fertile land, 47 per cent mildly fertile, while the other 41 per cent have low fertility. The farmers, especially those in Java, are reluctant to plant hybrid rice because this variant of rice has complicated requirements: there should be enough sun, water and fertiliser, ideal pH balance and strict pest control. And the price of the seed is 6 to 8 times more expensive than other premium varieties.

Small farmers who may own, for example, a quarter of a hectare of land will surely have to think twice to plant hybrid rice. Looking at all those problems, it thus becomes clear how to cope with food crises and increase the prosperity of the farmers in Indonesia: The country is more in need of a social re-engineering than a technological one. No matter how sophisticated the technology is, if the farmland is small, rice production will be small as well.

No matter how super the new variety of rice is, if the irrigation system is broken and the availability of water is not good, then the result of the harvest will not be good. Various research into finding a new variety of rice must be performed intensively, yet at the same time, agricultural reform, irrigation system construction and village infrastructure must be created immediately. For, without all that, any technological engineering would always hit a wall.

The writer is an agricultural and socio-economic analyst.