JAKARTA – As Ukrainian and Russian forces battled each other on the other side of the world, Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto was the featured speaker at a conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali which addressed the spiraling food crisis the conflict has created.
Over the space of an hour, the retired general managed to avoid mentioning Ukraine once, instead demonstrating an impressive grasp of food security issues and agriculture in general that seemed at odds with his military background.
“In my opinion, the main topic of the whole G20 summit should be about food security,” he said, echoing the sentiments of President Joko Widodo who has been looking at ways for the leaders to get beyond the narrow and contentious issue of Ukraine.
But the war between two of the world’s biggest grain suppliers, which has exacerbated the fragility of the world’s food supply, is proving impossible to ignore. “We should say ‘Russia, pull out now,’” former NATO commander General Wesley Clark bluntly told the forum.
It is already clear US President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders will never agree to a joint communique – or even a chairman’s statement – that does not condemn Russian aggression, which shows no sign of abating despite recent setbacks.
Summit observers believe that as host, and a neutral one at that, the only path available for Widodo may be a closing address on Wednesday in which he puts his own emphasis on health and food supply issues where some progress appears to be achievable.
Although he has shown little interest in international affairs until now unless there are economic benefits to be gained from it, there are signs the former town mayor may be warming to the task in the eighth year of his eventful presidency.
When Indonesia took over the chairmanship of ASEAN at its summit in Phnom Penh last week, he was uncharacteristically forthright on the difficult question of Myanmar and in warning that the organization would not be the proxy of any power.
Strange as it may seem, there is a good reason why the Defense Ministry was one of the co-sponsors of the Global Food Security Forum, organized by the Gaurav and Sharon Srivastava Family Foundation and the American Council as a precursor to the summit.
Two years ago, long before Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, Widodo handed his former presidential rival the responsibility for Indonesia’s food security and to prepare the country for future disruptions to the supply of staple foods.
It is a role Prabowo clearly takes seriously, even if the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) has been dragging its feet in implementing a mandate that covers all 15 military regions (kodams) making up the army’s nationwide territorial structure.
Each kodam is tasked with raising a production battalion, which will assist in the distribution of agricultural equipment and in securing food-related projects, including land acquisition for rice-growing and the creation of a strategic food reserve.
Under a separate US$350 million program, the government has also tasked the defense, public works and state-owned enterprise ministries with developing food estates, especially in southeast Papua, Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra.
Prabowo’s interest in agriculture can be traced back to when he was the running mate to Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI-P) leader Megawati Sukarnoputri in her losing race with incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2009.
Already seen as a prospective presidential candidate, he had actively set out to cultivate a concern-for-the-poor image as chairman of the Indonesian Farmers’ Union (2004-2009), the umbrella group for 14 grassroots agricultural organizations.
He also headed the Indonesian Market Traders Association (APPSI), with branches in scores of traditional markets, and relied for the rest of his core support on a network of martial arts organizations he fostered during his military career.
It was a strategy he had worked out with members of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s success team whom he had brought in to counsel him on Thaksin’s successful mobilization of rural voters in his historic landslide victory in 2001.
Widodo’s common-man appeal proved too much for Prabowo in consecutive presidential elections, but after his defeat in 2019 Widodo surprisingly chose him for the defense portfolio, a job he relishes and which has kept him in the public eye.
At the time, he pushed unsuccessfully for his third-ranked Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) to be given the agriculture job as well, but that went to a senior member of media magnate Surya Paloh’s National Democratic Party (Nasdem).
Now 71, Prabowo is pondering a third bid for the presidency in 2024. Referring to the phase “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away” coined by US General Douglas MacArthur, he told his Bali audience: “Here, old soldiers never die and they never fade away.”
He should know. Drummed out of the military in 1988 over human rights allegations, the former son-in-law of president Suharto has reinvented himself to a point where he is now a well-established and even admired political leader.
While his initial motivation in venturing into agriculture was to win the votes of millions of farmers in populous Java, where Indonesian elections are always decided, it has sparked a keen interest in farming that was on full display in Bali.
His closest confidante may well be his brother, entrepreneur and campaign financier Hashim Djojohadikusumo, another prominent speaker at the conference, whose diversified Arsari Group owns palm oil and rubber plantations in Indonesia and Africa.
Hashim noted that the Indonesian military had a stake in food security, wheat in particular, because many of its 400,000 servicemen rely on Indomie, Indonesia’s famous home-produced noodles, for their daily meals.
Out in the field, however, soldiers live on five assorted meals-ready-to-eat (MREs) packs, which are all rice-based.
While Indonesia imports all of its wheat requirements, now amounting to 12 million tonnes a year, Hashim pointed out that encouraging Indonesians to eat more rice would only lead to even higher rates of diabetes than there are now.