Food Carrying Capacity in Gerbangkertosusila Metropolitan Area Using Ecosystem Service-Based Carrying Capacity

Abstract

The issue of food security in Indonesia will persist due to the availability of agricultural area and problems surrounding it. Agricultural land conversion, urbanization-led urban expansion, endogenous and exogenous growth of the region with its population also helps intensify the issue of food security. Gerbangkertosusila metropolitan area is the largest urban agglomeration in East Java Province. Compared to other area in East Java, it has a relatively rapid increase in growth. This causes the quality and quantity of the environment to decrease. Efforts to support the sustainability of an area to meet the needs of humans and other living things require the carrying capacity and capacity of the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the status of food carrying capacity based on the environmental service. This research uses the modified environmental service-based carrying capacity with spatially calculated dynamic, as opposed to the administrative-based calculation that the common measurement has. The spatial dynamics in a region are captured with the grid-system, with other variables also follows the same grid. The result shows that mostly over 89% of the regions’ (represented in grids) food carrying capacity has already been overshot, and that all of the population threshold has also been overshot with exception in Lamongan Regency. It shows that Gerbangkertosusila metropolitan area is currently in a critical situation where it couldn’t support the food security by itself and that it needs to rely on other region forming a larger regional system to maintain its sustainability.