Indonesia Agriculture Ministry and BRIN expand research facilities to boost food self‑sufficiency

Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture and the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) signed a memorandum of understanding in Jakarta to grant BRIN researchers access to agricultural laboratories, research centers, and technical units in all 38 provinces. The partnership aims to accelerate the development and field deployment of innovations that improve productivity of key commodities such as cocoa, coffee, cashew, sugarcane, soybeans and garlic, thereby supporting the country's food self‑sufficiency goal.

Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said the collaboration will speed up downstream development of research products, with researchers placed directly at commodity development sites. BRIN head Arif Satria highlighted that the agency has already produced climate‑resilient crop varieties, advanced machinery, artificial‑intelligence tools, genomics, robotics and smart‑farming systems that will be leveraged under the new framework. The agreement is presented as a historic step to link scientific results with farmers' needs across Indonesia's agricultural sectors.