Glutinous rice not a priority

By Joko Sarwono

BOGOR, West Java (JP): What's so special about ketan, the glutinous rice that is widely used in various traditional snacks?

Nothing. At least not until recently.

Last month, sticky rice became the center of a debate following the announcement that Indonesia is swapping two locally manufactured planes for that particular agricultural product of Thailand.

That deal raises questions about the government's priorities when it comes to developing industrial technology. Although IPTN, the state-owned aircraft manufacturer, is widely showcased as Indonesia's leap into advanced technology, the plane-for-ketan barter agreement with Thailand is seen by some as undermining the claim that Indonesia has passed the era of having to master basic agricultural technology.

Scientists at the Biotechnology Research Center said it was not a question of Indonesia not being able to produce ketan, but more a question that ketan is not on the government's priority list of agricultural crops to develop.

"Most of our research is devoted to developing rice strains. Very little goes towards ketan," Suwarno, an expert at the center, told The Jakarta Post.

Not that the center has not developed high-yielding ketan strains. It has developed the Ayung and IR-29 varieties of glutinous rice, which have yields of four to five tons per hectare and a harvesting time of 135 days. In contrast, the traditional variety still widely planted in Indonesia has a lower yield and takes up to six months to harvest, or even eight months as in Kalimantan, Suwarno said.

The main drawback of the high-yielding varieties is they are costly to plant because they are not resistant to pests.

Research is currently underway to produce stronger strains, but given the low priority glutinous rice is given in agriculture research work in Indonesia, it may be some time before scientists make a breakthrough, said Suwarno, who obtained his doctoral degree from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture.

Requiring farmers to plant ketan seeds instead of rice would be uneconomical and could jeopardize the country's self- sufficiency in ordinary rice, Suwarno said. "To produce 100 tons of ketan, we would probably have to sacrifice the production of 200 tons of ordinary rice," he explained.

Thailand is ahead in producing sticky rice because it is the staple diet of some of its people, particularly in the north. It is also the rice widely eaten in Laos, explained Djoko Said Damardjati, head of the Bogor research center.

When cooked, ketan is sticky, soft, wet, shiny and filling. It does not absorb water and does not expand like other rice.

There are essentially four types of rice, depending on their starch content: high starch, medium starch, low starch and starchless. Ketan belongs in the last category.

High starch rice is widely consumed in Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Indonesia it is chiefly consumed by West Sumatran people. The majority of Indonesians prefer the medium-starch rice, while low-starch rice is consumed by people in Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

Djoko said Indonesia has always been importing ketan, which explains the reason why the Central Bureau of Statistics continued to show rice imports in its annual trade figures when the government claimed in 1984 that the nation had reached self- sufficiency in rice.

"The imported ketan goes directly to the food industry and does not reach the markets," Djoko said, underlining that glutinous rice is used as raw material for the production of tape (fermented rice), brem (alcoholic drink made from fermented rice), rengginang (snack food), popped rice and puffed rice.

Djoko said the importing of ketan has economic benefits in terms of providing jobs for thousands of people working in the food industry.

"If we accepted ordinary rice in the barter deal with Thailand, it would simply be distributed to civil servants, and have no impact on the economy," he said.

Bungaran Saragih, of the Bogor Agriculture Institute's Development Study Center, expressed a different opinion. He said the importation of ketan has a major negative consequence -- it depresses the price in the local markets.

"When the price tumbles, who are the losers? Our farmers. And you have to bear in mind that the farmers who plant ketan are poor farmers.

"So what that means is that when we sell our planes abroad, we're happy and we're proud, but this comes at the expense of a small group of our people, who are poor," Bungaran said.

Bungaran said that in the barter deal with Thailand, Indonesia virtually had a very limited choice as to what commodities it could get in exchange for its planes. The range of products depended on how much Thailand was willing to offer.

But Indonesia did not have to settle for ketan, he argued.

"Perhaps, we could have asked for phosphate fertilizer, which we don't produce, and which is something that our farmers need. This way, nobody loses out," he said.

He added that he did not know whether Thailand produces phosphate fertilizer.

Bungaran said that the barter arrangement was a way to solve IPTN's problems of selling its aircraft internationally on the competitive free market.

"I think there's something wrong here. If our products are competitive, then we should be able to sell the planes on the free market," he said.