Glutinous rice not a priority
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.