Govt Has No Plan To Revise Rice Production Target

Jakarta, March 5 (Antara) - The government has no plan yet to revise the rice output target for 2014 although widespread natural disasters have destroyed thousands of hectares of paddy fields in Java and Sumatra early this year. "(The disasters) had no relatively alarming effect on rice production although they delayed the first planting season. We will look at how the next planting season will be," Agriculture Minister Suswono states here on Tuesday. The Agriculture Ministry has set the target of unhusked rice output for 2014 at 76.57 million tons. Suswono added that he will consider whether or not to revise the rice production target after looking at rice production in the second planting season since the impact of natural disasters in the first planting season was not too significant. According to provisional data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), unhusked rice production rose by 3.24 percent to 71.29 million tons in 2013 from a year earlier. The rice production hike was recorded in the January-April and September-December planting seasons when the country had adequate rains. Thousands of hectares of rice fields were destroyed due to natural disasters in the past couple of months. The eruption of Mount Kelud on February 13 this year also destroyed 1,395 hectares of paddy fields in East Java`s Malang district, according to the Agriculture Ministry. At least 512 hectares of rice fields were also destroyed due to the eruption of Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra`s Karo district, according to Antara data. Widespread floods that hit the country early this year also destroyed 302,170 hectares of rice fields.