VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto hopes that the forestry sector in Indonesia will become a source of business breakthroughs and create wide job vacancies amid global economic competition.

"In the future Indonesian forestry must be able to create business opportunities and breakthroughs and be able to create wide employment opportunities, both for foresters and people living around forests," said Prabowo while delivering a speech at the Open Senate Meeting on the occasion of the 57th-anniversary Faculty of Forestry UGM which took place online, Friday.

Prabowo said Indonesia has the potential for 12.7 million hectares of social forestry programs in forest areas that can be developed into areas of food sovereignty and the production of good timber forest materials.

Of that potential, around 4.2 million hectares of which have been granted social forestry permits to farmer groups both in Java and outside Java.

Part of the area or around 2 million hectares can be used for food crop areas from within the forest area.

"This shows that the forestry sector can provide benefits and prosperity to communities around the forest," he said.

To develop economic programs in forest areas in realizing food sovereignty, according to him, the government must have the courage to take steps in favor of the program.

"One of them is by providing credit allocation to the forestry sector. With this alignment, we hope that modern food agriculture will be developed," he said.

On that occasion, the Minister of Defense also hopes that Indonesia will be able to produce new foresters who are tough, smart, and professional who can be empowered to work in food sovereignty programs in forest areas, for example, as young entrepreneurs (millennial farmers) or cooperative managers in the food sector.

"This is an anticipation to take advantage of the demographic bonus in the future," said Prabowo. (Antaranews)