Mega Rice Project
Abandoned agricultural project in Indonesian Borneo / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mega Rice Project was initiated in 1996 in the southern sections of Kalimantan, the Indonesian section of Borneo. The goal was to turn one million hectares of unproductive and sparsely populated peat swamp forest into rice paddies in an effort to alleviate Indonesia's growing food shortage. The government made a large investment in constructing irrigation canals and removing trees. The project did not succeed, and was eventually abandoned after causing considerable damage to the environment.