Policy on soybean cake affects farmers

JAKARTA (JP): The government's recent decision to lift restrictions on soybean cake imports is likely to hurt domestic farmers in the short term, an academician says.

Professor Bungaran Saragih, the director of the Bogor Agricultural University's Center for Development Studies, said this week that lifting import restrictions at this time would be disadvantageous to farmers.

He acknowledged, however, that it would have to happen sooner or later.

"When the government still limited soybean cake imports, it was only a matter of time before the restrictions were removed," he said.

But under the current conditions, he said, farmers would still have a long way to go before they could achieve the government's target of making the country self-sufficient in soybeans by the end of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan period in 1999.

"I think the government's target is too ambitious. It will take us another five to 10 years before we can become self- sufficient in soybeans," Saragih said.

Director General of Food Crops Amrin Kahar said earlier this year that the government's program for the current (1996/97) fiscal year was to sustain the country's self-sufficiency in rice and strive towards self-sufficiency in maize and soybeans.

He expected the country to reach self-sufficiency in soybeans by 1999, when productivity could reach about three tons per hectare, up from the present 1.1 tons per hectare.

Soybean production last year increased by 7.49 percent to 1.6 million tons over the 1994 level.

Saragih pointed out that Indonesian soybeans can not yet compete with imports, such as those from the United States and China, which are higher in productivity and quality.

In order to become more competitive, he said, Indonesian soybean farmers must be capable of choosing the right farming techniques, an aspect which they generally lack.

Saragih said that the government should focus its self- sufficiency targets on other commodities, such as vegetables and fruit. "These have potential and we could actually do well without imports," he said.

The government in April removed restrictions on soybean cake imports after years of requiring poultry feed producers -- which use soybean cake as a raw material -- to buy a certain amount of locally-produced soybean cake for every unit they import.

In a deregulation package earlier this month, the government also allowed general traders -- besides feed producer-importers -- to import soybean cake.

In 1993, the local-to-import ratio was reduced from 40:60 to 30:70. It is presently at 20:80. The measures are expected to prepare local soybean cake producers to face the total lifting of import restrictions. (pwn)