Indonesians eat less rice: Minister
JAKARTA (JP): State Minister of Food Ibrahim Hasan has dismissed concerns about the drought's impact on the national rice supply, citing huge government stocks and the fact that Indonesians are eating less rice than they used to.
"There has been a massive transformation in rice consumption in Indonesia that it (the drought) doesn't really bother me as the man most responsible for Indonesia's food supply," Ibrahim was quoted by Antara as saying.
Other government officials have also allayed public concerns about the country's rice supply with the likelihood of a prolonged drought. They said the 3.2 million tons of rice stored in government warehouses were sufficient to meet domestic needs for the next 10 to 12 months.
Ibrahim said the country's per capita rice consumption, which at one time reached between 150 and 180 kilograms a year, had declined to 130 kilograms.
This means Indonesia needs between 28 million and 30 million tons of rice a year, he said, noting that national production had once reached 36 million tons.
The minister, attending a seminar on tempeh in Denpasar, said Monday that the changing eating habits of Indonesians had resulted from growing prosperity, with annual per capita incomes increasing 12 fold from US$100 to $1,200 in the last 25 years.
He said Indonesians were increasingly replacing a carbohydrate diet with fruit, meat and fish.
Ibrahim said Indonesia had enjoyed two years of good harvests which were helping prop up the government's rice stocks.
"Although the drought is affecting many rice fields in Indonesia, we have enough food stock without having to resort to imports," he said.
North Sumatra is said to be the hardest hit by the drought with 14,054 hectares of rice fields reportedly affected.
But the province's food depot chief administrator, Col. Moch. Santoso, said there were not yet any signs of food shortage and prices remained stable, Antara reported.
He said a meeting at the Food Logistics Agency in Jakarta last week had discussed ways to overcome possible food shortages in certain regions.
In West Java, drought had affected 12,420 hectares of rice fields, Antara said.
But the acting chief of West Java's Office for Food Plants, Ali Maskoen, said that none of the province's farmers had declared their harvests a total failure.
He warned that more rice fields could be affected if there was no rain by the end of the month and that some rice fields might be declared a total failure.
The government had already set up a command post to deal with crises emerging from the drought, he added.
To overcome the drought, farmers have introduced alternate irrigation for their paddies and others have been backed up by water pumps.
In South Sulawesi, local officials said the province would remain one of the major "rice bowl" areas in eastern Indonesia although drought had already affected thousands of hectares of paddies. (09/emb)