ASIA Pulse [Australia], Friday October 15, 07:55 PM
Rice Dependence Threatens Indonesia's Food Security: Official
JAKARTA, Oct 15 Asia Pulse - Indonesia's low food security is the result of the
country's continued dependence on one particular foodstuff like rice, and to prevent
this dependence it would be necessary to turn to biodiversity.
"The Indonesian nation is made up of people of many different ethnic origins with
different specific food, and this condition is the basis of the country's food security,"
Tejo W. Jatmiko, Executive Director of the National Consortium for Indonesian Forest
and Nature Conservation (Komphalindo), said in Jakarta on Thursday.
The people of each region, he added, have their own wisdom for living based on their
espective environmental surroundings, so that a government policy of generalizing
each of these regions requiring all of them to raise rice, is the beginning of the lack of
food security.
"The people in Papua and Maluku whose staple food is sago, and the Timorese who
eat corn and tubers in view of the condition of these regions, should not be told to
raise and eat rice," he said.
According to Tejo, the national policy of rice planting in each and every region,
especially each time a new superior seed had been invented, is a mistake, as each
region has its own characteristics, and their harvest is often not the same as that in
the other areas.
Tejo explained further that the theme of World Food Day 2004 on October 16, namely
Biodiversity For Food Security, is very relevant to the condition prevailing in Indonesia
as a tropical country known as an agrarian country with a very high biodiversity.
The foodstuffs available in Indonesia, he added, vary widely including cereals, tubers
and legumes, in addition to vegetable and animal protein.
Each year, he said, Indonesia imported hundreds of tons of rice, not to mention
smuggled rice, only to meet rice supplies to achieve food security. Not to mention
other foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables.
Since the multidimensional crisis hit Indonesia in mid-1997, Tejo said, Indonesia's
capacity to meet its own need for food continued to drop. This condition indicates that
to meet the food need of its 210 million people, Indonesia has to import foodstuffs,
comprising 2 million tons of rice and 1.2 million tons of soyabean per year. In the
meantime, the Indonesian population is growing by an annual rate of 1.8 percent,
which also means that food consumption would also increase.
Under the Organic Kampong project launched at the end of September 2004, also on
the occasion of World Food Day, Komphalindo made a fresh attempt to introduce
foodstuffs like 'ganyong'(tuber of the Kana flower) which is sweet and can be turned
into powder to make various kinds of delicacies.
Actually, he said, all these is a matter of changing the eating habit of the people, and
the answer to the question: "Can we live without rice?". (ANTARA)
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