Indonesia developing food-bank estates ‘10 times size of Singapore’

JAKARTA: Indonesia is developing vast farm estates across the archipelago — an area 10 times the size of neighbouring Singapore — to counter the nation’s reliance on imported food, President Joko Widodo said Wednesday.

The project, which eventually will span nearly 800,000 hectares (two million acres), is preparing land to grow rice, cassava and corn for the world’s fourth-most populous country, Widodo told a televised cabinet meeting. The announcement will anger environmental groups, who have warned such projects mostly exploit peatland areas and encourage forest fires blamed for the seasonal haze that has choked much of the region for the past two decades.