Indonesia's food sector to be hit by climate change

JAKARTA, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Food sector is expected to experience the most serious impact due to the global climate change, Kompas daily quoted an official as saying on Wednesday.

According to the Agriculture Ministry's Head of Agricultural Land Resources Irsal Las, without anticipation steps, production will decrease because it would be the victim of change in rain pattern and increasing air temperature as well as rising sea level.

"The Agriculture Ministry has composed strategy and make various steps to prevent decreasing food production," Irsal said on Tuesday.

Irsal said that rain pattern and climate anomaly causes increasing area width of drought on paddy field.

Based on the Central Bureau of Statistic's data, the area width of rice harvest in 2009 stood at 12.8 million hectares with productivity per hectare of 4.97 tons.

Meanwhile, the ministry's data showed that of 3.1-7.8 percent of dried-up paddy fields, areas that failed to be harvested increased to 0.04-1.87 percent from 0.004-0.41 percent.