Is It Wrong that We Import Rice to Boost Food Reserves?
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26 August 2023 14:31 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency at the end of last year warned that Indonesia would face an El Niño-induced drought during August and September this year. El Niño, a dry weather phenomenon that usually causes the earth’s temperature to rise, is threatening food production as the dry spell could result in crop failure. Food scarcity usually arises three months after the dry season begins.
Arief Prasetyo Adi, Chief of the National Food Agency, said the government had anticipated this urgency and taken some precautionary steps. As of Wednesday, August 16, he added, the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) had stockpiled 1.3 million tons of rice, and efforts were still underway to add another 700,000 tons. “We’ve been preparing for El Niño, Lebaran (end of fasting month celebrations), and the elections,” Arief told Tempo reporters at his office on Friday, August 18.
Over one and a half hours, Arief explained the data on the needs and production of 10 food items, from rice to egg, which the National Food Agency is responsible for, and explained what the government had been doing to reduce the impact of El Niño. He also questioned the commitment of the regional governments to food resilience given the fact that they only allocated less than one percent of the budget to food.
In the meeting two weeks ago, what did President Joko Widodo ask about the El Niño’s impact?
Everything. I got the question as to why food prices were fluctuating. Who has the answer actually? Producers, of course. I only oversee stocks. It’s a breeze. Just import everything and I can meet (all the demands), like supermarkets. But we can’t be like that. We have farmers, poultry farmers. Price adjustments at the farmers will surely have impact downstream.
In your estimation, when does the total rice production fall?
This is the trends in 2021 and 2022.
How does El Niño impact rice production?
What we need to do is to boost production. Don’t blame the large number of rice milling machines of large producers. Their machine’s milling capacity is only 20 percent meaning they have shortages. The countries with an oversupply of rice are Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Besides stockpiling, they also export. But don’t jump straight to import. Let’s clear this first.
What is the current rice stock?
According to the data as of August 16, Bulog has a stock of 1.3 million tons from Vietnam, Thailand, and a little bit from India and Pakistan.
Why only little came from India?
They have elections next year.
Rice production is expected to fall by five percent. Is the Bulog’s stock sufficient?
It depends. We don’t know how harvests in the next three months will be. It’s safe if the fall is just five percent. It’s sufficient. My assignment letter to Bulog for last year was for 500,000 tons, and two million tons for early this year because we anticipated the situation. Now, we’ll see how August, September and October go. (The color) black dominates the (temperature) map meaning there are droughts. Everyone said food production would go down. Globally, Africa is extremely dry as outlined by the black color. Indonesia in orange means (the heat) is still medium. The conditions in August, September and October will have effects three months later. It means we should remain vigilant until January because farmers can’t grow optimally.
What can be done to change the situation?
The government has built reservoirs, irrigation canals and drilled wells and prepared the infrastructure to ensure sufficient water reserves. It’s costly to apply weather modification method such as dispersing salt in the air. If we are already aware of this pattern, why should people still say, “I wonder why the rice prices increased?” We know our production is limited, so, we have to have food stocks.
