Improving The Rice Production Calculation Method

As rice in one of Indonesia’s staple foods, the government needs accurate statistical data to help its policy making. Line ministries and agencies, particularly BPS (Badan Pusat Statistik: Statistics Indonesia), therefore, need to regularly improve the quality of the data collected. Refining the accuracy of food statistics, particularly rice, is one of the challenges faced by BPS and other relevant line ministries and is essential for maintaining national food resilience for both production and consumption.

Successful food resilience is strongly determined by good planning based on accurate and timely data, however, it is suspected that the methodology for calculating the area of ricefields under cultivation and rice production data produced inaccurate outcomes for a long time. A Study carried out by BPS and the Japan International Cooperation Agency in 1996 indicated an overestimate of harvest size by 17,07 percent which was caused, among others, by the estimate method applied at the time. Eye estimation is an estimation of land area based only on the estimation of the surveyor, this method is used because of limited budget and equipment as well as human resources.

The calculation showing an increase in ricefield area also needs to be reviewed as wetlands (ricefields) have been converted for use in industry, housing, and infrastructure.