Our first phase of research: mapping an emerging story
Indonesia’s ambitious transformation of its national food system has major implications for its biodiversity, climate resilience and communities’ livelihoods and wellbeing. Yet increasing national food production can and should have mutual benefits for these areas.
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We are working with farming communities, NGOs and government agencies across three diverse Indonesian provinces on inclusive and sustainable land-use approaches.
Now at the end of our first phase of research, we offer an emerging picture - illustrated through our story map - of the food security challenge that this vast archipelago nation faces. Read the summary below for the story map's key takeaways and shortcuts to .
Key takeaways:
1. The Challenge of Feeding an Archipelago
What would it mean for one of the world’s largest, most populous and most biodiverse countries to transform its national food system?
Since 2020, and in response to global and environmental threats to its food security, Indonesia has embarked on a massive agricultural programme, aiming to convert four million hectares of land and support future food self-sufficiency by 2029. Yet this enormous change in land-use must contend with a range of ecological and socioeconomic pressures on the foundations of Indonesian food production.
Read more about the challenge of feeding an archipelago.
Corn monoculture in Gorontalo province. Credit: Iswan Dunggio.
2. Impacts of land-use change on competition for farmland
We find that farming communities in different parts of Indonesia face multiple food security pressures: competition for land from expanding plantations for export, alongside ecological and socioeconomic instability.
In the past 20 years, Indonesia has massively reduced the number of people who experience undernourishment… Yet there is still a long way to go.
Sources: Global Hunger Index, 2024 and WFP. 2024. “Indonesia: Annual Country Report 2024.” World Food Program.
Between 2000 and 2020, oil palm and rice plantations increased at the expense of other agriculture. While Indonesia made major progress in tackling undernourishment in the population in those years, the 2024 Global Hunger Index still ranked its levels of hunger as moderate. Population growth and worsening effects of climate change are a threat to food security.
Read more about impacts of land-use change on competition for farmland.
3. Origins and evolution of food estates
Massive state-led agricultural projects… have shaped the landscape since colonial times.
Indonesian food estates have been shaped through a long history of changing political, social and economic circumstances. These stretch back from the colonial Dutch focus on export crops through a series of post-1945 independence national agricultural policies to the present day.
Read more about the origins and evolution of food estates.
4. Food estates in local context
Across the varied provinces of Gorontalo, East Kalimantan and West Papua, we find a combination of local traditions and innovations grappling with a range of ecological and socioeconomic pressures.
While recent modernisation efforts put local livelihoods and food security at risk through degrading soil quality and increased exposure to climate hazards, there are sustainable paths forward.
Read more about food estates in local context.
For more information, explore our full story map.
