THE Indonesian government is moving quickly to create a big impact in the agricultural and food sectors. Framed within a strong food sovereignty narrative, President Joko Widodo is now imposing two big agendas for the rice sector’s development. The first is to boost rice production to achieve 100 per cent self-sufficiency. The second is to graduate from 100 per cent rice self-sufficiency (RSS) to be a rice-exporting nation in the near future.

To achieve these targets, the Agriculture Ministry recently planned to reutilise the military’s civic mission, TNI Manunggal Masuk Desa, through Village Supervisory Non-Commissioned Officers (Babinsa) as quasi-agricultural extension officers.

Amran Sulaiman, the minister, argued that “50,000 Babinsa across the country would be a big help to cover the deficit of 20,000 agricultural extension officers (AEOs)”.

… Jonatan A. Lassa is a research fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies and Adhi Priamarizki is associate research fellow at the Indonesia Programme,  , Nanyang Technological University