The Abandoned Rice-Field Project in South Papua

14 hours ago 5

January 27, 2026 | 04:22 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Its official name is a pilot field, or demonstration plot (demplot). But the four rice fields the government built a year ago in Wanam village, Ilwayab District, Merauke Regency, South Papua, look more like a scrapyard. On Wednesday, December 3, 2025, dozens of empty shipping containers lined the entrance to the site. An excavator stood idle nearby, along with a forklift, a row of broken heavy trucks, and abandoned plowing machines.

On the embankment of the 4-hectare plot, a tattered banner hung from four wooden stakes. It once detailed the plan for the first 10,000 hectares of newly opened rice fields in Wanam. The design divided the paddies into 200-hectare square blocks stretching along both sides of a 135-kilometer road running from Wanam village to Muting District.

There was no sign of farming activity that day. Only the tire tracks of a combine harvester remained, traces of the inaugural harvest on May 16, 2025. Based on Tempo's observations, only two plots were harvested. In other sections, rice stalks stood yellow and unattended, each grain bearing 30 to 40 kernels. During the first harvest, the government claimed the pilot field yielded 2.5 to 2.8 tons per hectare of dried unhusked rice of the Inpara 2 variety.

The reality proved different. The fields in Domokalo hamlet, Wanam village, were estimated to have produced only about 1 ton per hectare. "The government tried planting rice, but it didn't work. They planted twice and failed twice," said Liborius Kodai Moyuwend Tayoga, 59, a clan leader of the Moyuwend clan in Wanam, on November 29, 2025.

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