Output to be boosted as RI moves beyond rice

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Fri, May 16 2014, 10:35 AM

The government will accelerate the production of cassava because it is believed the crop can alleviate challenges such as food and energy shortages.

The Agriculture Ministry’s post-harvest director Pening Dadih Permana said on Wednesday that the ministry was currently putting together a strategy for the 2015 to 2019 period, which includes expediting production of several strategic commodities including cassava.

                  
“The ministry is focusing on the development of bio-industrial farming, which can produce food and energy,” Dadih said, adding that cassava could be converted into bioethanol.

To accelerate cassava production, the Agriculture Ministry would expand cassava’s crop acreage, improve farmers’ cultivation techniques and control food imports, he added.

Indonesia is still relying on rice as its staple food, but declining production since the self-sufficient era in the early 1980s has prompted the government to develop other food sources.

“Indonesia has the potential [to develop other food sources],” Dadih said, adding that cassava, with its many advantages, might be 
the answer.

The Indonesian Cassava Community (MSI) chairman Suharyo Husen said that one of the advantages of cassava was that its cultivation was easy. “Besides already being familiar to Indonesians, the cultivation of cassava is very easy,” he added.

Achmad Subagio from PT Tiga Pilar Sejahtera Food research department said that cassava could even be planted on sand. 

“I’ve tried to plant cassava on around 3,000 hectares of sand in Jember and Lumajang and it surprisingly worked,” he said.

Cassava also had a very high productivity rate compared to paddy, according to Subagio. “Around 23.5 million tons of cassava were produced from harvest areas of 1.2 million hectares, while 13 million hectares of paddy fields could only produce 65 million tons of rice,” he added.

Demand for cassava reached 60 million tons per year, Husen said, but production only reached 23.6 million tons last year, according to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS). That was a decline from 2012, where production reached 23.8 million as harvest areas also decreased to 1 million hectares last year from 1.1 million hectares the previous year.

Dadih said that there were several obstacles in the development of cassava’s production and consumption. “The lack of quality seeds and harvest areas are just some of the hurdles. The price of flour made from cassava is also less competitive compared to the price of wheat flour,” he added. In addition, according to Subagio, there is also a stigma that cassava is food for the poor. (ask)

Sumber: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/05/16/output-be-boosted-ri-moves-beyond-rice.html

OPINION

In my opinion the presence of cassava that abundant and with low prices in the countryside can be upgraded into the high-value foodstuffs. To support the government policies that will accelerate the production of cassava plants because it is believed to alleviate challenges such as food and energy shortages. Moreover, Indonesia is currently not fully self-sufficient in food, in the sense that the entire region can not meet their own food needs of diverse, so that at any given moment requires imports. If the capability of food production domestic can not follow the increasing needs, then Indonesian will depend imports in the future, which means that national food security will increasingly vulnerable as it will increasingly depend on the economic policies of other countries. Therefore, it's very appropriate if the development target food sector in Indonesia, including is making the one of tubers such as cassava as a substitute for rice. In an effort to increase local food that does not rely on one commodity alone.