Diversify diet to regain rice self-sufficiency

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia will likely regain self-sufficiency in rice by 2000, when the middle class abandon their dependency on rice and diversify their diets, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture says.

Atok Suprapto, head of the ministry's Database Center, said over the weekend that the increase in rice consumption was unavoidable because improved social welfare allowed the poor to consume rice.

"We can only rely on the middle class to shift their staple diet from rice to other high-calorie foodstuffs, like wheat, and to diversify their menus, such as by increasing the intake of protein," he said after a ceremony during which Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah presented honorary medals to former ministry officials and long-serving civil servants.

Quoting Sjarifudin, who had addressed the assembly earlier, Atok said that Indonesia is expected to have a surplus of rice by 1999, or at the beginning of the seventh Five-Year Development Plan.

According to Atok, Indonesians consumed 126 kilograms of rice per capita a year in 1984, when Indonesia's population was still 185 million.

Presently, with a population of 197.3 million, the figure has increased to 130.7 kg of rice per capita a year.

"If we can cut back rice consumption to the 1984 level, imagine how much rice we could save," he exclaimed.

Indonesia, formerly the biggest rice importer in the world, became self-sufficient in rice in 1984. Until 1993, the country's rice exports exceeded imports. Since then, however, Indonesia has had to rely on imports.

Import

The National Logistics Agency (Bulog), which was set up to manage the distribution of basic food commodities and maintain their prices at reasonable levels through market operations, imported a large amount of rice last year due to a sharp decline in rice production.

The Central Bureau of Statistics said in June that the country's rice production last year fell by 3.2 percent to 46.6 million tons of unhusked rice -- the lowest level in 15 years -- from 48.2 million tons in 1993.

In spite of the imports, Bulog's chairman, Beddu Amang, disclosed last week that the agency currently has a rice stock of only 784,000 tons, which will increase to between 900,000 and 1 million tons by the end of the year.

This is less than half of this year's target of 2.5 million tons and is also lower than the average rice stock in the past five years.

Beddu was quoted by Antara as saying that the low rice stock was "unexpected" and occurred in spite of the government's efforts to loosen quality restrictions and to provide transportation and distribution incentives.

As a solution, the government plans to conduct a crash program which will include clearing more than 1 million hectares of swamp and forest in Kalimantan to give way to new rice estates. (pwn)