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INDONESIA TO OVERCOME FERTILIZER SCARCITY IN NEXT 5 YEARSSURABAYA, May 01, 2009 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- Indonesia's fertilizer scarcity will be overcome in the next five years, along with the government projection of a Go Organic Year in 2010. The fertilizer supply crisis was caused by the imbalance between demand and supply. And in East Java, for instance, of the need for 1,360,000 tons of urea fertilizer per year, the government was able to supply only 1,050,000 tons to the food sector, not to mention the horticultural, fishery, and plantation sectors, chairman of the Association of Small and Medium Fertilizer Producers (AP2UKM) Noer Sutjipto said here Wednesday. To overcome the problem, he said, efforts are being made under the Go Organic program to reinvigorate organic fertilizers like the traditional farmers had done in the 1960s. "It is worth recalling that chemical fertilizers are harmful to soil. Right now, the organic substances in the land in East Java is in a minus-2 condition, while ideally it should be plus-2. To correct the land structure, organic fertilizers would be needed," he said. This policy, he added, provides a good opportunity to small and medium businesses operating in the organic fertilizer sector, in view of the large organic fertilizer consumption. Right now, he added, the production of organic fertilizers of AP2KMI members in East Java reached only 30,000 tons per year, while current needs reached 200,000 tons per year, which kept increasing. "The farmland in East Java currently reached 1.7 million ha, and if each ha needs 2 million tons of organic fertilizers, there would be an opportunity for 3.4 million tons," he said. (ANTARA) |