Government plans tighter control on soybean prices
Government plans tighter control on soybean prices
JAKARTA (JP): The government will tighten control of soybean
prices on the domestic market in a bid to encourage farmers to
intensify and expand production to reduce dependence on imports,
an official says.
"The price controls are necessary to reduce imports because
the country's soybean production has increased by an annual
average of only 1.1 percent in the last five years, while imports
rose 8.5 percent per annum," Director General of Edible
Plantation and Horticulture Amrin Kahar said in a seminar here
yesterday.
The government currently controls only the price of imported
soybeans to protect local farmers from foreign competition.
Amrin said that in 1993, Indonesia produced 1.7 million tons
of soybeans and imported 610,600 tons worth US$164.8 million.
"If we want to preserve our exports, we have no other choice
than to increase soybean production," he added.
According to Amrin, the Ministry of Agriculture and the
National Logistic Agency (Bulog) have agreed to launch a special
program to motivate farmers to increase soybean production to
achieve national self-sufficiency.
Ten provinces -- East, Central and West Java, Lampung, Aceh,
South Sulawesi, West Nusa Tenggara, North and South Sumatra and
Yogyakarta -- will have priority for receiving instruction to
help increase production, he said.
During the newly begun Sixth Five Year Development Plan
(Repelita VI) period, the country will set aside an additional
184,000 hectares of land for planting soybeans, he added.
Productivity
Amrin said the programs are expected to increase soybean
productivity of land devoted to soybean planting from 1.19 tons
to 1.5 tons per hectare.
The country's soybean production, therefore, is expected to
increase to 2.65 million tons next year, 2.93 million tons in
1996, 3.20 million tons in 1997 and 3.48 million tons in 1998, he
said.
In a related development, Dedy Fardiaz, a scholar of the Bogor
Institute of Agriculture, supported an increase in soybean
production because of their high nutritional value.
Soybeans are already a staple food for most Indonesians.
People usually process soybeans to make tofu, tempe, tauco, kecap
and soybean milk. Local people use bacterium rhizopus oligosporus
to ferment soybeans into tempe. Tauco is fermented soybean paste
which is used as a condiment.
Citing research statistics, another speaker, Mansur Fauzan of
Bulog, said that during 1987, a single Indonesian on average
consumed 8.5 kilograms of soybeans. People living in rural areas
consumed 6.6 kilograms each and those in urban areas 12.3
kilograms each.(09)