Food security means we have access for enough food we need for an active and healthy life. If you feel hungry and have no food, it is food insecurity. Imagine if you feel that way everyday! Currently, around one-tenth of the world population lives undernourished, with 135 million people live in acute hunger. The impact of undernourishment is broad — from hampering growth, increasing disease prevalence, impairing cognitive development, even causing death. We need to pay attention because food security is one of the lead factors to determine Indonesia’s future. To understand more about food security, read our work here.

To achieve food security, first and foremost we need to produce the food sufficiently to keep pace with population growth. However, fertile land that is suitable for producing food has been lost over the years — mostly converted for development. Fertile land is defined as optimal land. Suboptimal land is the area that is less fertile but still can be used. At a glance, people see suboptimal lands as land that cannot be used for anything. Based on its dominant characteristics, there are two types of suboptimal land: dryland and wetland. More specifically, there are five types of suboptimal lands in Indonesia, namely (1) acidic dryland, (2) dryland on the dry climate, (3) tidal swampland, (4) lowland swamp, and (5) peatland. Find out more explanation here and visual here.

With decreasing fertile land for food production, we need to find a way to expanse farmland without harming the environment. The conventional farmland expansion is through deforestation. Suboptimal land provides a different answer. This seemingly abandoned land can give us benefit to grow food crops without us damaging forests. However, we should safeguard the agriculture practice in suboptimal land to avoid the same mistake of mismanaging the fertile land that lead to devastating catastrophes.

Many of us did not realize that the way our foods are produced sometimes hurt the ecosystem. Excessive use of fertilizer has contributed to water and soil pollution while uncontrollable water use has tipped off the water balance of our planet. In sustainable agriculture, three aspects of environmental, social, and economical must be balanced. Several key principles to have a sustainable agriculture are:

• Improving efficiency in the use of resources. 
• Directing actions to conserve, protect, and enhance natural resources.
• Protecting and improving rural livelihoods, equity, and social well-being.
• Enhancing resilience of people, communities and ecosystems.
• Practicing responsible and effective governance mechanisms.

Sustainable agriculture is an effort to minimize the negative impact of the practice for its surroundings. By safeguarding our ecosystem, not only us, but also the generation after us can live better. You can read practical things about sustainable agriculture in our work here.

Everything is possible. On July 20, 1969, the first human landed on the moon in the Apollo 11 mission. Managing sustainable agriculture in suboptimal land is far less complicated than landing at the moon. The key to grow food on suboptimal land is to address the specific limiting factors based on the land’s characteristics. For example, we need to rewet the soil in a degraded peatland while we need to provide water and increase the soil pH in acidic dry soil. More detailed information about this can be found here. The question is, are we brave enough to start this revolution?

Let’s talk about Indonesia. Indonesia has 17.504 islands, but the agriculture depends on fertile lands that are mostly located in Java. FYI, two-third of Indonesia’s land area is suboptimal land. If we can produce food using the principle sustainable agriculture in suboptimal lands that are available in many regions of Indonesia, food availability will increase and it is more accessible for more people.