Indonesia: Drive for self sufficiency on staple foods

Indonesia has been striving to become a self-supplied nation on staple foods next year with 32.9 trillion rupiah (about 2.3 billion U.S. dollars) earmarked to finance various programs.

Speaking at a hearing of the state budget in the parliament on Monday, Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said the self-supplied nation drive would be applied on cultivation of seven major food commodities - rice, corn, soybean, garlic, chili, meat and sugar.

According to the minister, rice production was targeted to reach 75.13 million tons next year, corn at 21.35 million tons, soybean at 1.5 million tons, sugar at 2.8 million ton, shallots at 1.17 million tons, red chili at 1.1 million tons and green chili at 796,000 tons.

The Agriculture Ministry has drafted plans, such as crop area expansions, education and training programs for farmers, crop warehouse revitalization, improvement of irrigation system, and subsidies for seeds and fertilizers.

Speculators have been manipulating the supplies of staple foods that led to soaring prices of those commodities in domestic market in the past few years.

The government addressed the issue by selling those commodities in traditional markets at affordable prices.

Source: globalpost.com