REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Indonesian Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman claims to have anticipated the impact of El Nino since January by distributing water pumps and implementing the desired improvements to the tertiary irrigation system.

"We have prepared and distributed 21 thousand units of water pumps throughout Indonesia since January. We have also improved the tertiary irrigation system for 1.3 million hectares of agricultural land," Amran stated during a press conference on drought disaster management, here Monday.

The Ministry of Agriculture is coordinating with other agencies to conduct artificial rain to reduce the impact of El Nino on agricultural areas that are mostly dry.

"This initiative has especially been launched in areas such as West Java, Central Java, East Java, South Sulawesi, South Sumatra, Lampung, and West Nusa Tenggara," Amran revealed.

Furthermore, 200 thousand hectares of agricultural land in Indonesia is prone to drought every year, Amran added.

However, Indonesia's rice crops would not be affected by the drought this year as approximately 76.3 percent of the 14 million hectares of agricultural land has been harvested until August 2015.

"What must be our key concern is the harvest at the peak of the drought in September-October. However, it is only two million hectares, or about 15 percent of the total agricultural land in Indonesia," Amran remarked.

Moreover, due to the arrival of the rainy season, successful harvest is forecast for eight percent of the crops due in the November-December period.

"It is important to pay attention to the 15 percent earlier. Hopefully, the harvest failure would not reach the safety threshold of 100 thousand hectares," Amran pointed out.

The early anticipatory measures are important as they would provide an additional 400 thousand hectares of harvest while encountering crop failure due to the drought, he added.

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