JAKARTA, TheKabarNews.com—The House of Representatives (DPR) has approved a new Agrarian Reform Regulation Law. This law seeks to redistribute land, resolve long-running agrarian conflicts and limit excessive land concentration.

Lawmakers endorsed the bill during a plenary meeting at the parliamentary complex in Jakarta on Tuesday, September 22.

All parliamentary factions and the government supported the legislation. They completed the legislature’s final approval stage two days before National Farmers Day.

“Can the Agrarian Reform Regulation Bill be approved and passed into law?” Deputy House Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad asked the plenary session. Lawmakers responded, “Agreed.”

The approved text contains 16 chapters and 70 articles, according to parliamentary records. Legislators and government representatives examined 596 items on the problem inventory list. They also consulted 55 parties, including ministries, academics and civil society groups.

The House’s official account said the framework prioritizes areas marked by land inequality, agrarian disputes, abandoned land and ownership exceeding statutory limits.

The legislation establishes a dedicated Agrarian Reform Priority Locations (LPRA) that is under and accountable to the president.

The LPRA will oversee priority locations and coordinate land redistribution, rights restoration and conflict resolution across sectors.

The law identifies small farmers, tenant farmers and farmworkers as priority beneficiaries. Traditional fishers, Indigenous peoples, women and low-income communities also qualify.

It provides legal protection for beneficiaries and people defending land rights, as well as community advocates, witnesses and whistleblowers.

The Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) welcomed the approval but said the law’s value would depend on implementation.

“A good gift is not merely the birth of a law. The measure is how far it is genuinely implemented,” KPA Secretary-General Dewi Kartika said.

KPA wants the new agency to provide a practical route for landless farmers to obtain land and for Indigenous communities to recover customary territories. It also called for the protection of fishing grounds and equal land rights for women.

The scale of Indonesia’s land problem gives the law an immediate test. KPA’s monitoring report documented 341 agrarian conflicts in 2025, covering approximately 914,575 hectares and affecting 123,612 families in 428 villages.

Plantations accounted for 135 of those cases. The figures come from KPA’s monitoring system rather than an official government registry. However, they show the volume of disputes the new framework may have to address.

Land inequality also affects millions of agricultural producers. Indonesia’s 2023 Agricultural Census recorded 17.25 million small-scale farmers using less than 0.5 hectares of agricultural land. That represented a large share of the country’s 27.8 million agricultural land users.

The law also requires controls on land ownership to prevent concentration or reconcentration by private companies and state-owned corporations.

Other provisions cover public participation, a supervisory council, data reporting, funding and criminal sanctions.

Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Nusron Wahid said the government expected the stronger legal foundation to benefit tenant farmers, traditional fishers and other vulnerable groups.

Formal numbering and promulgation must follow the parliamentary approval before the definitive text becomes available in Indonesia’s national legislation database.

Implementing regulations will then determine how quickly the new institution can begin working. These regulations will also shape how the government settles overlapping claims.

For KPA, parliamentary approval marks a starting point rather than the end of the campaign. The law’s credibility will ultimately depend on whether authorities resolve conflicts, redistribute land transparently and prevent beneficiaries from losing control of the land again.