Holiday Ayo - Deputy Minister of Agriculture Sudaryono revealed the potential for cooperation between Indonesia and Australia regarding the development of swamp land into rice fields.

He expressed this after receiving a visit from the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia Penny Williams at the Office of the Ministry of Agriculture (Kementan), Jakarta, Wednesday (25/9).

Sudaryono said that this collaboration could be carried out through research. This means that Australia can carry out research or send researchers to study swamp land in the country.

In this way, the development of swamp land into rice fields can be more optimal.

"One of them is that we ask the Ambassador to perhaps join research or send experts and so on. We need a practice base, an experience base and a technology base," said Sudaryono as quoted by cnnindonesia.com

He also said that he had conveyed the government's mission for food self-sufficiency to Penny.

Therefore, the use of swamp land as rice fields is important.

"And in this self-sufficiency program there is one expert that Australia has in this matter regarding the optimization of swamp land," said Sudaryono.

The Ministry of Agriculture is developing efforts to optimize swamp land for use as rice fields.

One of these was carried out in Merauke Regency, South Papua. Secretary General of the Directorate of Infrastructure and Facilities, Ministry of Agriculture, Hermanto, revealed that the optimization of swamp land into rice fields in Merauke has reached 95 percent of the cultivation target of 40 thousand hectares.

"Now, from the target of 40 thousand, there are more than 38 thousand hectares. So the percentage figure is around 95 percent. So there are only 1,800 hectares left that are still in the process of being worked on," said Hermanto when directly inspecting the optimization of swamp land in Kurik District, Merauke, Monday (23/9).