Smart agri to solve El Niño food security challenges
Added on 07 August 2023
This condition will increase cloud growth in the central Pacific Ocean, thereby leading to reduced rainfall in Indonesia.
Indonesia is facing El Niño again in 2023, after earlier experiencing La Niña.
La Niña is the opposite of El Niño wherein rainfall in Indonesia occurs with high intensity that triggers disasters, such as floods and landslides.
Meanwhile, reduced rainfall in Indonesia will have a considerable impact, such as plummeting food crop production. Water scarcity will disrupt agricultural activities that will result in food needs going unfulfilled.
El Niño is closely related to the country's agricultural sector. Food crop production requires water availability that is the key to running the agricultural sector.
Apart from dependence on rainwater for irrigating rice fields, there are other ways, such as optimizing dams and irrigation canals.
However, rainwater is also needed in order to be collected in dams. For instance, the surface water level (TMA) of Katulampa Dam in East Bogor Sub-district, Bogor City, remains at zero centimeters since early June.
The low TMA at Katulampa Dam and the low water discharge of Ciliwung River had been triggered by the absence of high-intensity rains in the upstream area that is located in Puncak, Bogor District, West Java.
This condition could indicate the dry season that has been forecast by the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG).
The BMKG projects low or very low rainfall in the dry season this year.
President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has also drawn focus to the challenges arising from El Niño this year.
Image by DCStudio on Freepik
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