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Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Having a vast area of farm land and a large number of farmers, Indonesia is a country meeting the basic prerequiites to be self-sufficient in a number of foodstuffs.

But unfavorable foodstuff prices that prevailed during the past few years discouraged farmers from growing food crops on a large scale, and this led the world's fourth most populous nation to become dependent on imported staples.

With the massive decrease in global food supplies and the hikes in their prices, the country's dependence on imported food commodities will wreak havoc on the efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in the commodities.

The soaring global crude prices have given rise to the production of biofuel that requires huge amounts of food commodities. The higher prices of global food commodities have also affected the prices of such commodities at home.

A member of the House of Representatives Commission IV, Aria Bimo, said the food price hikes could be the result of the government's lack of concern for food sovereignty and its predilection for food imports.

"If the national food needs continue to rely on imported foods, the national food security will get weaker and weaker," he said.

The head of the National Mandate Party for economic, cooperative and business affairs, Didik J Rachbini, said the government's lack of attention to national food security would not only cause the nation to face food shortages but also put the agricultural sector on the line.

"The government must be serious and accurate in implementing its national food policies because we are facing many uncertainties and formidable external challenges," he said.

Prof Dr Muchamad Maksum of the School of Agricultural Technology at the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University (UGM) said the national food security policy appeared to have been designed in such way that the country would increasingly become dependent on imported food commodities.

This had led to a worldwide movement that caused the prices of food commodities such as sugar, rice and soybean to skyrocket, he said.

"When domestic foodstuffs are scarce, imported foodstuffs have always been the choice. However, this policy has discouraged farmers from growing food crops," he said.

Rice, sugar, soybean, and corn are among the foodstuffs in the country of more than 225 million people. But their output which fell short of domestic needs prompted the country to import the food commodities.

According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), the country's dry unhusked rice production last year reached 57.05 million tons, up 4.77 percent from a year earlier.

Corn output in 2007 rose 14.44 percent to 13.29 million tons from the year before.

However, soybean production last year fell 20.76 percent to 592,380 tons from the previous year.

Despite an increase in their production, Indonesia still imported rice and corn last year.

Through the National Logistics Agency (Bulog), Indonesia last year imported 1.2 million tons out of the projected 1.5 million tons of rice from Vietnam and Thailand.

Corn imports last year fell 600,000 tons to 1.1 million tons from 1.8 million tons the previous year, according to data from the Directorate General of Food Crops at the Agriculture Ministry.

The import of soybean which was mostly used as a raw material to make tempeh and tofu stood at 1.2 million tons while the national soybean consumption reached 1.3 million tons.

Head of the Food Availability and Vulnerability Center at the Agriculture Ministry Tjuk Eko Hari Basuki said the country was expected to meet the need for five key food commodities, namely rice, corn, soybean, sugar and meat on its own in the next few years through a food self-sufficiency program.

Through the program, the government will help farmers improve the management of farm businesses and introduce high-yielding seeds, among others.

But the shrinkage of farm land, particularly paddy field due in part to development of housing complexes, roads and industrial estates will pose an obstacle to the program.

To date, the country has an estimated 7.4 million hectares of irrigated paddy fields. But it is feared the area will shrink over time as more and more of it is made to serve purposes other than food production.

Between 1999 and 2002 alone, 423,857 hectares of irrigated paddy fields were converted into non-agricultural land. This means that the country was losing an average of 110,000 hectares of paddy field every year.

Director General of Land and Water Management at the Agriculture Ministry Hilman Manan said his office had allocated Rp326.6 billion in funds this year to create 42,136 hectares of new paddy fields.(*)

Source