Siswono Yudo Husodo

Siswono Yudo Husodo
Chairman
Indonesian Farmers Association
(HKTI)
Jakarta

Food, as an essential commodity, must be made available in
sufficient quantities and good quality, as well as being safe for
consumption and widely accessible at an affordable price.

Apart from rice, Indonesia's annual consumption of other food
products remains low on a per capita basis. The consumption of
non-rice food may increase along with educational improvement,
better knowledge of nutrients, welfare promotion and increased
population (a present 1.6 percent a year).

Without proper handling of the vast domestic food market,
which should serve to strengthen the country's agricultural
sector, foreign food producers will reap the most benefits of
all.

Currently, to supply food to 210 million people, Indonesia has
to import rice totaling two million tons (the largest in the
world, as it represents 9 percent of national consumption). Other
imported items include sugar, reaching 1.5 million tons (the 2nd
largest, or 40 percent of national consumption), corn over 1
million tons, soybeans 1.3 million tons (the largest for human
food, at 45 percent of national consumption), wheat 4.5 million
tons and beef equivalent to 450,000 cattle head (24 percent of
national consumption).

Food imports are driven, first, by a very large domestic need,
second, low prices on the international market, third,
insufficient domestic production and fourth, import facilities
from producing countries.

The low international market prices result from the presence
of residual goods like chicken legs from the United States and
other animal by-products from Australia. Surplus yields from
producing countries are also sold overseas to maintain their high
domestic prices, like sugar from Australia and India, rice from
Thailand and Vietnam, tobacco from China, oranges from China and
Taiwan, etc.

If food prices on the world market become lower (as a result
of massive inflow of residual goods) the developing countries
will depend more on imported food. Low-priced agricultural
commodities serve as a disincentive to production increase. The
available instrument permitted by regulations of the World Trade
Organization to hamper the import is the import duty tariff.

Our ability in agriculture to meet our food needs is
decreasing tremendously given growing dependence on supply from
abroad. The vast domestic food market is being eyed enviously by
overseas food producers who do not want Indonesia to be
independent in food supply.

Without careful planning and consistent strategic steps to
enhance food production, Indonesia will continue to be a major
net importer of food in ever-increasing quantities, which in turn
will threaten our national pride in our ability to persevere.

In view of our large population, extensive amount of
agricultural land with adequate an supply of workers and the huge
amount of foreign exchange required to import food, while our
foreign exchange reserves are very limited, we must meet our food
needs independently in a relatively short time. This should
become a political decision.

Good planning and appropriate steps are required to meet the
great demand for production increase. Improved education and
better welfare will raise Indonesians' demand for more
nutritious, more hygienic, tastier and safer food.

Apart from efforts to achieve independence in staple food
supply, cattle breeding and fisheries also require basic changes,
especially to enhance the economic scales of farm businesses to
improve their welfare. Improving the welfare farmers and cattle
breeders is a must if we want to make their products highly
competitive, while farmers need larger land plots per household.

The shrinking acreage for farm businesses and the rising
number of petty farmers with limited plots form a significant
obstacle to productivity promotion and quality enhancement of
agricultural products, not to mention the welfare of farmers.

Continuous land fragmentation will impoverish farmers and
cattle breeders and also render their products uncompetitive in
terms of quality and price.

Meanwhile, large and relatively wealthy provinces such as East
Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, Papua, Jambi,
Riau and South Sumatra can develop their own agricultural and
cattle breeding activities, which are owned by farmers using
modern mechanization techniques.

The low food price policy has, for a long time, adversely
affected farmers and created low wages, and has been cited as a
hidden cost of subsidy for the industrial sector at the expense
of agriculture.

Food sustainability that depends too much on one commodity,
namely rice, has the risk of causing vulnerability to household
and national food sustainability.

So, we need to develop and promote alternative staples, such
as legumes, breadfruit, sago and other grains (corn, sorghum
etc.), which can be processed into flour and enriched with
vitamins and minerals. The seedling industry must also be
strengthened. This is true as well of its supporting industries,
namely those of agricultural implements and machines as well as
fertilizers and pesticides.

The policies required if agriculture is to survive against
foreign competition in this borderless world are thus proposed as
follows:

1. Expanding the total area of agriculture, especially on dry
land yet to be researched, by at least about 120,000
hectares/year, of which 40,000 hectares are meant as a substitute
for land changing its designation into non-agricultural
functions.

2. Increasing the land area for cattle breeding and fishery
businesses from the average of 0.3 hectares per family in Java
and 0.8 hectare per family nationwide in 2001, to an average of 3
hectares per family in Java and 6 hectares in Indonesia in 2030,
combined with the development of capital-intensive mechanization.

3. Allocating an adequate budget to agricultural
infrastructure development, especially irrigation facilities and
roads.

4. Reducing farmers' total number both in percentage of the
work force and its nominal figures from 48 percent in 2001 (22.5
million) to 15 percent in 2030 (15 million). This can happen if
economic growth is high enough and their employment is well
planned and prepared.

5. Adopting a policy that may improve the domestic prices of
agricultural products, including through the import duty tariff
to provide an incentive for production increase.

6. Determining targets of self sufficiency for rice in 2006,
sugar in 2012, beef in 2010 and milk in 2015 by boosting
production through intensification, expansion, technological
improvement (including genetic engineering) and food
diversification.

7. Setting the goal to become a net exporter of food by 2010,
by adopting the latest technology.

8. Developing high quality agricultural and food industries,
which are efficient and highly competitive from the upstream to
the downstream, as well as agro-industries in villages.

9. Developing local products for food diversification.