For the Indonesian government, the success of this project will not be measured in the amount of rice paddies successfully and sustainably planted.

Instead the goals are:

1) Good domestic press

2) Java-driven development of eastern Indonesian resources and infrastructure

3) Military and police expansion into West Papua

--- Good Domestic Press ---

The Indonesian government under Prabowo has instituted wide-ranging austerity. Cuts to government services, layoffs of government employees, and reductions in government spending are currently fuelling demonstrations and protests in a number of major Indonesian cities. I have myself witnessed these protests in both Jakarta and Makassar in just the past month. Diverting funding for large projects such as these is given as a justification for this austerity.

Prabowo has promised to provide free meals for all school children across the entire country. It is very difficult to argue against providing cheap food to children and rural communities (The "Free Nutritious Meals" (MBG) program). In my experience, a lot of government spending goes directly into the pockets of government officials, so cutting the spending across the board is one way to reduce corruption, I guess. Interestingly, the military has not had its budget cut (in 1970, Prabowo was discharged from the military for alleged human rights abuses)

--- Java-driven development ---

For historical reasons both related to - and preceding - Dutch colonisation, Indonesian policy and governance are highly Java-centric. Indonesia is extremely culturally and linguistically diverse, as well as geographically disparate. Eastern Indonesia is much, much less developed than the west, particularly Java. Consequently, maintaining centralised control has been a constant struggle for the Indonesian government for decades. Any project that involves direct government-led large-scale development of eastern Indonesia is aggressively pursued. See the Nusantara City development in Kalimantan (which itself has had over 70% of its funding cut by the new president)

  --- Military and police expansion into West Papua ---

Leading from the point above, there is low-intensity civil strife in West Papua. Due to the above stated Java-centric model of governance and diverse cultures, Indonesia is under constant risk of fragmentation. The central government is very, very afraid of this. In fact, this is essentially the main function of the Indonesian military. Indonesian soldiers go to West Papua to engage in guerilla war against the local populace to prevent this resource rich region from achieving independence. As with any war, it is fought on a number of fronts - economic, social, cultural and military. This project is another front in the war, displacing and disenfranchising local populations, increasing military and police presence and disrupting any attempts at local sovereignty.

So, whether this project ever actually produces enough rice to feed people was never the point.

I live in a largely agricultural area of Indonesia - one with a large number of fish and shrimp ponds. It is a very large, and very informal market. Your estimate of a billion fish-feeders is probably too high, but there are certainly hundreds of millions spread across a number of islands stretching from Malaysia to Australia. As with many home-based industries here, there are very few personal financial records, let alone business records. Deals are made verbally, very rarely are there signed contracts between vendors, suppliers, middlemen, or farmers. Plus, there is massive, institutional corruption at all levels and in all facets of Indonesian society. As long as the right individuals are getting paid - whether that is politicians, managers, accountants, auditors, government employes, whoever - they don't care about the actual profitability or viability or benefit of a company like this. And those who know but don't benefit will simply be silent, as the Indonesian courts rarely side with whistleblowers, who are vulnerable to extreme forms of extrajudicial revenge for exposing the bad behaviour of individuals or institutions with power. The one thing you can be certain, the fishermen and farmers got little to no benefit from this fraud. And those that did benefit from the company's services, will lose that benefit once the company collapses thanks to the fraud. There is a reason that, despite having the fourth largest population in the world, a strategic geographical location, and an incredible abundance of natural and mineral resources, international investors are wary of Indonesia.