Land use planning for food self sufficiency in Central Kalimantan

Abstract

Food is essential for the continuation of human life on earth. Therefore, in this era of rapid industrialization, careful land use planning to secure adequate area for sustainable food production become imperative, particularly in the ASEAN region. This paper presents a proposed method of land use plan to allocate adequate land area for staple food production by studying the dynamics of food supply and demand in a specified area of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. For this purpose, a simple food production model was developed to secure adequate supply for basic needs for energy and protein of the community surrounding conservation forests. Using this premise, further destruction of forest land in the area, as the only source of community income, can be prevented. As a strategy for food production, a multi-attribute model will be used to select appropriate technology for the area so that sustainable development can be achieved. Computational results when the model was applied to the case of Indonesia indicated that the currently adopted SUPRA INSUS technology package has the highest utility value using six attributes:1) Energy ratio per ha; 2) Employment rate; 3) Environment degradation due to the use of fertilizers, pesticides, etc.; 4) CO2 emissions; 5) Net gains by farmers per ha; and 6) Number of working hours of the farmers for soil preparation. In addition, using the above criteria, the multi-attribute model was able to select the best alternatives from 84 possible modes of farming methods for rice production, from soil tillage to rice milling. The computational results also provide the required allocated area for food production to supply adequate energy and protein for the ever increasing population. The final aims of this study are to determine the proper land use allocation and the required optimum technology package that can maintain a proper balance between food supply and demand in the wetland ecosystem of Central Kalimantan, while protecting the allocated area for the conservation of biodiversity and soil and water for sustainable agricultural development.