Incentives Needed to Achieve Self-Sufficiency

KOMPAS/AGUS SUSANTO

Farm workers thresh red rice in Sukanegara Village, Jonggol District, Bogor Regency, West Java, Wednesday (11/5/2022).

JAKARTA, KOMPAS — Even though we are still far from a global food crisis, Indonesia still needs to work hard to cope with the increasing trend of food-commodity imports. In addition to improving food policies both for upstream and downstream activities, business incentives, especially for farmers, breeders and upstream actors, are still needed in order to strengthen production as well as national food self-sufficiency.

Those are the key points that came up during the Self-Reliance Economic Discussion on food which was held by Kompas daily in Jakarta on Tuesday (13/9/2022). Speakers at the discussion included Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto; head of the National Food Agency, Arief Prasetyo Adi; the corporate secretary of State Logistics Agency (Bulog), Awaludin Iqbal; the rector of IPB University, Arif Satria; and the chairman of the Association of Seed Banks and Indonesian Farmer Technology (AB2TI), Dwi Andreas Santosa.

According to Airlangga, maintaining food security is a priority for the government in order to improve the welfare and equity of the people. "The steps the government must take include increasing productivity, for example, [by permitting] the use of GMO seeds in corn; and it can also be used for soybeans and rice," he said.

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> Food Production and Distribution Need Strengthening

> Building Food Security

In the short term, the government strives for the availability and affordability of food in order to control inflation. In terms of rice, for example, said Airlangga, the Bulog had been assigned to prepare 1.2 million tonnes of government rice reserves. According to Airlangga, the government is also seeking low-interest financing and a loss-selling mechanism to strengthen the function of Bulog.

Food availability and inflation control are also the concerns of the government. “Food stocks and food prices in regions are closely monitored. Every regional head must heed the President’s order to use 2 percent of the regional transfer fund allocation for the community," he said.

Meanwhile, Dwi Andreas said imports of eight commodities, namely rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, sugar, cassava, garlic and peanuts, jumped from only 8 million tonnes in 2008 to 27.6 million tonnes in 2018. In 2019, the volume decreased to 25.6 million tonnes, but the imports further increased to 26.3 million tonnes in 2020 and 27.7 million tonnes in 2021.

The food situation is not good and we need extraordinary work together to overcome this problem.

"This is a big problem and a heavy task for the government, because if you look at rice production in the last 20 years, the average increase is only 0.67 percent per year, while population growth is 1.3-1.4 percent per year.

“There is a big gap. The food situation is not good and we need extraordinary work together to overcome this problem," said Andreas who is also a professor of the Faculty of Agriculture at IPB University.

At the same time, said Andreas, wheat-import growth reached 16.5 percent per year. Last year, the wheat import totaled 11.6 million tonnes. "This is an important issue in dealing with future problems," he said.

According to Arief Prasetyo, Indonesia is still far away from a food crisis, thanks to the fact that the supply of staple foods is still relatively safe, as well as their substitution. However, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo asked for mitigation to cope with the food supply; the global food crisis, which is expected to occur in 2023, can be well anticipated.

“This challenging situation could be turned into an opportunity. If we can't import, we have to be able to produce domestically or try to substitute. Papua and Maluku, for example, can produce sago-based food,” said Arief.

KOMPAS/HERU SRI KUMORO

The Economic Discussion with the theme Food Security is the Key to Facing the Potential for Global Crisis was held by Kompas Daily in Jakarta, Tuesday (13/9/2022).

Diversification

Apart from boosting production and productivity in processing, there should also be a public campaign to diversify consumption. The food ingredients that are promoted should be diverse, nutritious, balanced and safe.

Airlangga said that in order to overcome the difficulty in importing wheat, for example, the government encouraged food substitution and diversification. “First, by trying to grow sorghum; second, by encouraging planting cassava to produce tapioca for food; third, the use of sago flour for cakes," he said.

According to Arif Satria, Indonesia is experiencing the wrong food-diversification program. Supposedly the food consumed is non-rice commodities produced locally. However, in reality, wheat, which is imported, has become a popular choice.

The increase in wheat consumption occurred amid a downward trend in the average per-capita consumption of rice. The sufficiency of rice from domestic production in the last three years is also linked to this trend.

"Now is the time to reduce dependence on imported food. Local-food production must be taken seriously and done systematically. IPB, for example, makes noodles from various local food ingredients, but the problem is who wants to invest in their production. A big public campaign is needed," he said.

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> Helping Food Producers

> Beware of 2022 Food Stock

Technologically, Indonesia is actually not left behind. There are many innovations and research findings. For soybeans, for example, IPB has developed varieties whose productivity exceeds the national average productivity of 1.5 tonnes per hectare, Arif said.

However, farmers are reluctant to plant it, due to the lack of business incentives. As the soybean price is low, farmers prefer to plant rice or corn, which is considered more profitable. “It means there is no incentive for farmers to grow soybeans. This applies to other commodities," he said.

According to Andreas, business incentives are the key to boosting production. When their work provides good earnings to farmers, such as due to good selling prices during harvest time, the farmers will automatically try to increase the production and productivity of their crops. However, the situation is often unfavorable to farmers, especially regarding import policies.

This article was translated by Hendarsyah Tarmizi.