Assessing Self-Reliance Amid Global Uncertainty
President Prabowo Subianto’s State Address on 14 August 2026 was delivered at a time when the global environment is moving in uncertainty. Geopolitical conflicts, open warfare in several regions, trade wars, and supply chain disruptions have shown how dependence on external supplies can affect a country’s vulnerability.
The President explicitly referred to this situation and stressed the importance of Indonesia being able to stand on its own feet and not rely entirely on external supplies. In this context, self-reliance should not be interpreted as an attempt to close oneself off from the world economy. Indonesia still needs trade, investment, technology, and international cooperation. Self-reliance is more accurately understood as a country’s ability to maintain its strategic functions when the global environment is in a state of uncertainty.
From this perspective, at least three agendas are worth examining in the President’s address: energy self-reliance, human development through nutrition, and food self-reliance. At first glance, these three sectors appear different, but they share the same underlying issue: how to reduce Indonesia’s vulnerability to crises beyond our control.
Energy and Global Vulnerability
The B50 biodiesel programme is one of the clearest examples. In his address, the President stated that the use of palm oil-based B50 has moved Indonesia towards self-sufficiency in diesel fuel. The government stated that since July 2026, diesel imports can be halted and foreign exchange savings are estimated at around Rp 170 trillion or USD 9.5 billion.
However, energy self-reliance must not stop at the question of how much imports have been reduced. There is a sustainability dimension that must be safeguarded. Because B50 relies on palm oil, the increased demand for raw materials should not drive plantation expansion at the expense of forests and areas with high carbon stocks.
Studies based on emissions measurements in Indonesian oil palm plantations show that the emissions benefits of biodiesel can be substantially reduced when emissions from land-use change are taken into account. Therefore, the next agenda should not merely be to increase biodiesel volume, but to improve the productivity of existing plantations, strengthen smallholder oil palm farmers, guarantee raw material traceability, and maintain land-use discipline. In this way, energy self-reliance goes hand in hand with the environmental agenda.
Nutrition and Investment in People
A nation’s self-reliance is also not determined solely by energy reserves, because ultimately a country’s capacity depends heavily on the quality of its people. This is where the Free Nutritious Meals programme gains its relevance. The President positioned nutrition as one of the foundations of human development and stressed that the nation’s next generation should not have to learn while hungry.
In the address, the programme was also linked to efforts to tackle stunting. The stunting problem is indeed not yet resolved. The 2024 Indonesian Nutrition Status Survey recorded a national stunting prevalence of 19.8 percent, down from 21.5 percent the previous year. This figure shows progress, but it means nearly one in five Indonesian children under five still suffers from stunting.
Therefore, the programme has strategic potential that cannot be measured solely by the number of kitchens built or the number of meal portions distributed each day. From a public health perspective, far more important indicators are whether children’s dietary quality improves, whether protein and micronutrient adequacy is met, whether anaemia declines, whether child growth improves, and whether concentration and school participation increase.
Stunting is a chronic nutritional problem that is primarily formed from pregnancy until a child reaches the age of two, the period known as the first 1,000 days of life. The WHO regards this period as a critical window of opportunity. For school-age children, nutritious food remains very important for fitness, learning concentration, nutritional adequacy, and the formation of healthy eating habits. However, for stunting prevention, intervention cannot wait until a child enters school.
This is where the programme ideally should not stand alone. It needs to be integrated with antenatal care, prevention of anaemia in adolescent girls and pregnant women, breastfeeding, the quality of complementary foods, immunisation, sanitation, clean water, and the strengthening of integrated health posts and primary health services. In this way, the programme is not merely a food distribution scheme, but part of a life-cycle-based policy for developing the next generation.
Food Amid Climate Risks
The third challenge is food. Climate change has made agricultural production face ever greater uncertainty. At the same time, Indonesia is also confronted with climate variability such as El Niño, which can prolong dry periods and increase pressure on water availability.
At the end of July 2026, the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency recorded that El Niño is expected to persist at least until the early first quarter of 2027. The dry season in nearly half of Indonesia’s regions is expected to be longer than normal. It is conditions like these that give food self-reliance a far more strategic meaning.
In his address, it was stated that Indonesia has achieved self-sufficiency in eight commodities: rice, maize, consumption sugar, chicken meat, chicken eggs, shallots, large chillies, and bird’s eye chillies. The government also said fertiliser prices have been successfully reduced by 20 percent after simplifying distribution governance.
Production achievements certainly deserve appreciation. But the success of self-sufficiency should not be judged solely by the size of national production or the thickness of food reserves.