Patali (Market) Day organized by Omar Niode Foundation on February 23, was a celebration of Indonesia’s agriculture, food and culinary arts.

To understand the status of agriculture and food in Indonesia, we invited Yusni Emilia Harahap, senior expert to the Minister of Agriculture, to give her remarks.

Ibu Emilia graciously gave her permission to have her remarks published for our readers.

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It is an undeniable fact that Indonesia has a population of 230 million, the 4th largest in the world. The country’s level of rice consumption, 102.2 kg/capita/ year in 2009 was among the highest in the world.

Demand that must be met is to provide food for people from all walks of life. Food security of a large country such as Indonesia is very vulnerable if it cannot be met from domestic production.

Agriculture is the sector provider of food and this role will never be replaced by other sectors. Although of course the support of others is important.

Besides the strategic role to meet the needs of food, the Agriculture Sector is essential in the supply of industrial raw materials, feed / odder and bioenergy, the source of foreign exchange and a source of income. Additionally, agriculture contributes to the preservation of the environment through eco-friendly farming practices. One aspect that is equally important is the agriculture sector as the main employer. As an illustration, in 2012 the sector absorbed about 32% of the total national labor force.

In regards to food, there are five priority commodities in agricultural development namely rice, corn, soy, beef and sugar. In order to meet the basic food needs, Indonesia aims at achieving self-sufficiency and sustainable self-sufficiency in food and agriculture.

In terms of agricultural production, the performance in 2012 was encouraging, except for soybeans. For example, rice production increased 4.86% in 2012 to around 68 million tons compared to production in 2011. Likewise, plantations and horticultures showed improvement. We have superior plantation commodities namely oil palm, rubber, coconut, cocoa, clove, nutmeg, coffee, cashew, and more.

Despite the encouraging achievements on our rice production, it must be understood that to achieve sustainable self-sufficiency, we cannot just rely on increased production, but should also work to reduce rice consumption by developing diverse, nutritious and balanced food pattern.

The Presidential Regulation No. 22 of 2009 has set the Acceleration of Food Consumption Diversity based on Local Resources.

In relation to the policy, all stakeholders are encouraged to succeed in food diversification and nutrition program. Such program is expected to lower the per capita rice consumption with a reduction target of 1.5% per year, which was offset by an increase in the consumption of tubers, animal protein/animal food, fruits and vegetables.

Similarly, there should be efforts to reduce dependency on imported raw materials for food. As an example is increasing the growth of industrial flour made from local raw materials so as to gradually substitute the imported flour.

Our food security is supported by the following tremendous prospects:

1. In terms of biodiversity and gro ecosystem. Indonesia has abundant natural resources and has been named a mega biodiversity country. Our land biodiversity is the second largest in the world after Brazil, whereas when marine biodiversity included, Indonesia would be the largest. This can be seen through various kinds of commodities for food crops, horticulture, plantations and farms that have long been cultivated as sources of food and income.
2. Indonesia has a large enough agricultural land that has not been used optimally.
3. Agricultural labor, technology, growth, buying power and the market support the country's agriculture and food developent

In Part 2 of this blog post we will be uploading some tables containing production data that featured several main agricultural commodities and the provinces that produce them. The tables also listed the variety of local wisdom illustrated in traditional foods and local materials as the ingredients.

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Images: Edmund Lowe Photography, Jtoddpope, Aleksandar Todorovic, Murat Subatil/ Shutterstock, Omar Niode Foundation