Diversify diet to regain rice self-sufficiency

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)