Realizing Food Security, Indonesia Begins Self-Sufficiency of Rice Again

INDUSTRY.co.id - Jakarta - Indonesia is now beginning to rebound in rice, fresh chili and onion consumption. In fact, Indonesia is now starting to export onion. This can be achieved thanks to the cooperation between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) in realizing food security.

"Our cooperation with the TNI to realize food security has begun to show good results. It is seen from the absence of rice imports, fresh chili and onion consumption as usually done for price stabilization in the domestic market," said Suwandi, Acting Officer of Public Relations and Information Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture in Jakarta, Friday (15/09/2017).

Suwandi said that the ability to self-sufficiency and export is proof that Indonesia is able to realize the vision of world food barn in 2045. The next step is self-sufficiency in garlic and sugar consumption in 2019, soybean by 2020, industrial sugar in 2024, and beef in 2026.

"We are already on the right path to our vision when Indonesia is a century old," he said.

Suwandi revealed, as the self-sufficiency, the welfare of farmers also increased as seen in the indicator of poverty in rural areas fell 4.7%. "Initially the poor population in the village in March 2015 was recorded at 17.94 million people and fell to 17.09 million in March 2017," he said.

The next step, the Ministry of Agriculture continues to implement the structural process that ensures the vision of the world food barn 2045 materialized. First, develop agro-based industrialization based on comparative advantage.

"Indonesia must be glorious again for coffee and spices. Integration of upstream-onfarm-downstream activities is built on an economies-wide region so as to generate added value and local income," explained Suwandi.

Second, to strengthen the infrastructure so as to facilitate the flow of distribution from village to city, in the village built roads, irrigation / electricity, electricity, telecommunications, financial institutions, farming markets and others.

Third, industrialization in the countryside will absorb a lot of manpower, so need to increase the capacity of human resources to be professional and productive. Local personnel are trained to use machine tools, workshops, services and others according to competency standards.

Fourth, the limited number of farmers is overcome by mechanization. Kementan provides 80,000-100,000 units of agricultural machine tools annually. With mechanization such as tractor, water pump, rice trans planter, combine harvester and Rice Milling Unit proven to reduce cost up to 40%, time, effort, and decrease shrinkage of crop between 4-8% and improve quality.

"The mechanization technology is what makes the younger generation now interested to plunge into agriculture and rural areas, and the young generation also responded positively to the Ministry of Village-PDT program now," added Suwandi. (Abraham Sihombing)