Seeking Indonesia's Food System Concept: Drawing Lessons from Food Estate Project

Efforts to overcome food insecurity are becoming more crucial as triggered by the combination of climate change, global conflicts, rising cost of living, declining food production and high food prices. Indonesia with population growth, which is projected to increase by 69, 1% in 2045 or up to 311 million people in 2050, need to provide solution to reduce and mitigate the impact of food insecurity. Indonesia’s heavy reliance on economic agriculture, fisheries, forestry and other natural resources, often troubled by all situations related to climate-related hazards. The government is trying to address problems with the food estate project, but has elicited backlash from some scholars and CSOs, as the project neglects socio-economic and cultural dimensions of local people. The opponents argue that the project is derived from neoliberal food security model, which has proven failed to eradicate the hunger problem. Researcher is using qualitative method with a desk study approach to examine data and information taken from secondary data sources. Researcher revealed some factors that made the food estate did not work as expected. One of them is due to the concept that ignores the importance of cultural diversity and ecologies coupled with a lack of engagement with the local population. The researcher provides some evidence on the weakness of the food security approach, and offer a policy shift to a mixed approach that fits the Indonesian case.