Nation 'should alter' rice-dominated diet
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesians need to alter their diet and reduce rice consumption because the country's production of the staple will be lower this year due to an El Nino-induced late planting season, experts have warned.
In a discussion at The Jakarta Post last Thursday, a team of experts from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture said it would be too costly to import the rice needed to enable the country's population of 203 million to eat their usual quantities of rice due to the rupiah's battering against the U.S. dollar.
In the discussion, the team presented what they described as the best and worst scenarios. In the worst scenario, at least nine million tons of rice would have to be imported if the nation's annual rice consumption remained at the current level of 130 kgs per person.
If people could lower their annual consumption to 110 kgs per person -- by increasing consumption of non-rice foods -- the country would "only" have to import five million tons, the team said.
"This scenario (importing nine million tons of rice) could become a reality if we realize only 50 percent of the targeted (rice) planting (of 4.2 million hectares) this year," said Rizaldi Boer, a climatologist with the team.
However, fellow climatologist Henny Suharsono -- another team member -- said this year's paddy planting season would be late due to the drought induced by the freak El Nio weather phenomenon, predicted to drag on until June this year.
Rizaldi also said that even if 90 percent of the planting target could be met, the country would still have to import rice; 4.5 million tons if consumption levels remained at 130 kgs per person, or 0.5 million tons if consumption levels were reduced to 110 kgs per person.
The team -- also comprising agroeconomist Suryoadiwibowo, forestry expert Hariadi Kartodihardjo, bionutritionist Hermanu Triwidodo and sociologists Ujang Sumarwan and Damayanti Buchori -- warned that unless the problem of widespread imminent food scarcities was seriously addressed, the situation could get "very tough" to handle.
"I wonder if (government-sponsored) labor-intensive projects to make use of idle land for agroforestry (to generate more non- rice crops) could help," Rizaldi said.
He was referring to one of the government's latest moves to secure the supply of rice and non-rice crops amid the country's deepening economic crisis.
The government's other plan, dubbed by many as too ambitious, is to convert more than one million hectares of peat into rice fields in Central Kalimantan.
Rizaldi said 55 percent of the country's rice supply was produced in Central and East Java.
But Rizaldi's colleague, Suryoadiwibowo, lamented the conversion in the 1990s of an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 hectares of productive land in Java -- particularly in northern coastal regions known as Pantura -- into industrial sites. He blamed the conversion for contributing to the threat of food shortages.
"In the last 30 years, local varieties (of crops) have been wiped out, leading to a dependency on rice as the sole staple food," he said.
Hermanu Triwidodo said the prolonged drought, which has delayed the paddy planting season and therefore affected the national rice supply, had caused some "indigenous people with indigenous knowledge" to turn to non-rice crops in order to fend off a food crisis.
Hermanu cited the Blora tribe in Central Java.
"These tribespeople now refuse to sell the rice they harvested (last year), they are keeping it for themselves, and in addition they have also planted yams and cassava," he said.
According to Hermanu, the magnitude of this year's imminent food scarcity would not be felt much by farmers who had their own land. Tenant farmers who had no land of their own, on the other hand, would feel the shortage particularly acutely, he said. (aan)