Abstract for: Sustainable Development of Indonesian’s Agricultural Sector

The Indonesian agricultural output has been struggling to provide for the demand of the rising population in recent years owing to the sluggish growth rate in this sector as compared to the overall performance of the economy. While the current slash-and-burn technique widely employed by Indonesian peasants is able to boost the output in the short term, its negative implications on the environment and the constraints in available forest area casts doubts to its sustainability in the long run. As the results from our iThink model simulation has illustrated, the output will cease increasing and decline in about 90 years’ time due to the drastic drop in forest coverage. Based on the sensitivity analysis of the affecting factors, three policy amendments are proposed to avert the gloomy perspective, namely increasing funding for Research and Development, curbing burning activities, and actively returning abandoned land to forests. With the effective implementation of the suggested policies, the growth in the agricultural sector will be steered back to a sustainable track, which is further confirmed by the model projection.