Agriculture, where our guest turns waste into soil

What the government says

Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture said in May 2025 it plans to apply artificial intelligence to agriculture by integrating farm data, citing the Netherlands as a model⁷.

Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said the government had budgeted about Rp10 trillion for farm technology, including agricultural drones and sensors that read soil conditions and nutrients⁸.

What startups are building

• Elevarm. Indonesian agritech Elevarm raised $4.25 million in pre-Series A funding led by Intudo in March 2025 to build AI-powered farmer productivity tools; the company says it supports more than 15,000 smallholder horticulture farmers in West Java, Central Java and Yogyakarta⁹.
• Agros. Indonesian agritech startup Agros raised a US$4.25 million Series A to scale solar irrigation with flexible financing, and says it supports over 6,000 smallholder farmers in Indonesia, Cambodia and Myanmar¹⁰.

Degraded land

FAO estimates crop yields are 10% lower because of human-induced land degradation, and that reversing 10% of that degradation on existing cropland could restore enough production to feed an additional 154 million people every year¹².

Agricultural observer Khudori of the Indonesian Political Economy Association (AEPI) said in December 2024 that 75-80% of rice-field soils in Java have organic carbon below 2%; he did not cite a data source¹³.

Fertiliser subsidies

• By type. Of the 9.55 million tonnes of subsidised fertiliser allocated to agriculture for 2026, 558,273 tonnes are organic fertiliser, against 4,423,023 tonnes of urea and 4,471,026 tonnes of NPK, Fortune IDN reported, citing the Agriculture Ministry's director of fertilisers, Jekvy Hendra¹⁴.
• Prices. Indonesia cut the retail price ceiling (HET) of subsidised fertiliser by 20% from 22 October 2025 and is keeping it: Rp1,800/kg for urea, Rp1,840/kg for NPK (Phonska) and Rp640/kg for organic fertiliser¹⁵.
• Budget. Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan said on 2 December 2025 that the 2026 subsidised fertiliser programme has a budget ceiling of Rp46.87 trillion¹⁶.
• Distribution. By 26 June 2026, 4.77 million tonnes of subsidised fertiliser had been distributed, about 48.5% of the 2026 allocation¹⁷.

Bali's rice harvest

Bali's rice harvested area fell 7.09% in 2025 to 96.44 thousand hectares, BPS Bali said¹⁸.

Bali produced 331.53 thousand tonnes of rice in 2025, down 26.65 thousand tonnes or 7.49% from 2024, BPS Bali said⁶.

Bali's land: three separate statements

• BPS Bali. BPS Bali's head of agricultural statistics, Sapto Wintardi, said land conversion happens almost every year in Bali, estimating that about 6,000 hectares were lost between 2019 and 2024, and called it a suspected cause of falling rice output¹⁹.
• The governor. Bali Governor I Wayan Koster said in November 2025 that conversion of productive land in Bali was very high, around 600-700 hectares a year²⁰.
• The land minister. Bali had 64,474 hectares of standard rice-field land (lahan baku sawah) in 2024, of which 39,973 hectares are designated as protected sustainable food farmland (LP2B); Land Minister Nusron Wahid said converted rice fields must be returned to rice²¹.

Rice: the claim and the data

President Prabowo Subianto declared on 6 January 2026 that Indonesia had achieved rice self-sufficiency in 2025, and said government warehouses held more than 3 million tonnes of rice reserves²².

In October 2025 Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan said Indonesia had imported no rice in 2025, but BPS recorded US$178.5 million of rice imports in January-October 2025, which the Agriculture Ministry said were special and industrial rice, not medium rice, Bisnis.com reported²³.

Free Nutritious Meals (MBG)

For 2026, the government has prepared Rp335 trillion from the state budget for the programme, Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said in January 2026²⁵.

The head of Indonesia's National Nutrition Agency, Dadan Hindayana, said the programme needs at least 6 million new laying hens in 2026, equal to at least 1,500 new poultry farmers, to serve eggs twice a week²⁶.

Startup funding

Southeast Asian startups raised $7.25 billion in the first half of 2026, the strongest half-year since the first half of 2022, but one $4.5 billion data-centre round drove most of it, and the number of deals fell to its lowest since at least 2018, DealStreetAsia reported²⁷.

Global agrifoodtech funding was $16.2 billion in 2025, almost flat (-3%) on 2024, according to AgFunder's 2026 Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report²⁸.

Credit to farmers

• BRI. State bank BRI disbursed Rp178.08 trillion of subsidised People's Business Credit (KUR) to 3.8 million borrowers in 2025, with agriculture the largest sector at Rp80.09 trillion, or 44.97%²⁹.
• National. Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs data put national KUR disbursement at Rp240.09 trillion by 31 October 2025, 83.77% of the Rp286.61 trillion target, with trade and agriculture taking the largest shares³⁰.

eFishery

A draft internal investigation found eFishery, the Indonesian aquaculture-tech startup backed by Temasek and SoftBank, inflated its revenue by nearly US$600 million in the first nine months of 2024, The Jakarta Post reported citing Bloomberg³¹.

Indonesia's Bandung High Court cut eFishery co-founder Gibran Huzaifah's prison sentence to six years from nine, DealStreetAsia reported in July 2026³².