self-sufficiency in food – Food is the most important basic human need and is the right of every Indonesian. Food order processing is very important as a key factor in realizing the quality of human resources that support national development. Therefore, it is necessary to make efforts to secure food security which forms the basis of national development, and is expected to trigger development efforts in other fields.
Food crop commodities are also one of the main parts of the agricultural sector, and the government places them as the center of all development plans every year. Commodities from food crops are always sought to be available in sufficient conditions to meet the needs of domestic food, feed and industry, and these products serve to fulfill these needs. This commodity serves as the fulfillment of the basic need for carbohydrates in industrial raw materials.
Due to the importance of food needs for the community, on this occasion sinaumedia will discuss what food self-sufficiency is. For those of you who don’t know, this will be a new knowledge for you. To find out more about food self-sufficiency, let’s look at the following review.
Definition of Food Self-sufficiency
Food self-sufficiency is greater ability and knowledge to carry out these economic activities, especially in the food sector, thus enabling us to provide our own food needs through various activities to meet the needs according to the needs of the Indonesian people. Natural resources that must be able to meet all the food needs of the Indonesian people. Efforts include various activities, including:
- Establish laws and government regulations for farmers and agricultural land.
- Providing infrastructure for cultivating food crops, such as purchasing land for irrigation and irrigation networks, printing land for growing food crops, especially rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, and economic road access to the land.
- Consultation and ongoing development to increase the production of seeds, medicines, technology and human resources for farmers.
- Food diversification so as not to depend on just one staple, in this case rice/rice. The most likely diversity options for Indonesia are sago, wheat and maize (especially eastern Indonesia).
Therefore, diversification is part of a food self-sufficiency program that includes the development of other options/alternatives for rice/rice stocks (because rice/rice is the staple food in Indonesia). One way is by socializing various menus that do not require the consumption of carbohydrates such as rice, such as cassava, sweet potatoes and potatoes.
Self-sufficiency Acceleration Policy
Over the past few years, the government has made and implemented various policy breakthroughs for food production and self-sufficiency while still prioritizing GGCG ( Good Governance and Clean Government ). This policy mainly relates to:
- Auctions that are time consuming and not seasonal
- budget rebalancing;
- Expired seed aid;
- Rewards and sanctions;
- Agricultural insurance;
- HPP and HET;
- Increasing program synergy; And
- Increasing the intensity of assistance and escort.
The strategy to encourage the implementation of national development programs must be effective not only in one or two breakthroughs, but also in a combination of mutually supportive policies.
Achievement of Self-sufficiency
The government has set priorities to achieve the goal of self-sufficiency in food. Achievement of the target of self-sufficiency in food is targeting rice, soybeans and corn in 2017. For this reason, the government continues to increase agricultural production.
The Ministry of Agriculture continues to make internal improvements through organizational transformation to accelerate the achievement of food self-sufficiency targets. The transformations carried out include Reframing, Restructuring, Revitalizing, and Renewing .
Reframing
Reframing is changing the concept of the Ministry of Agriculture regarding the goals to be achieved and how to achieve them. This is related to the spirit of the organization. Meanwhile, we often get stuck following certain ways of thinking and lose our ability to develop new mental models of where you are and what you will be like in the future. The reframing dimension includes, getting mobilized, creating a vision and, building a measurement system. Reframing brings organizations to new ways of thinking and new determination to get there.
Restructuring
Restructuring is an effort to reorganize the Ministry of Agriculture into a more proactive organization and more responsive to the various dynamics that occur. Even though in a formal organization the organizational structure does not change, there is a systematic organization in implementing special efforts.
At the operational level, the achievement of real goals is realized including the success of the program as a whole, namely by donating funds, mobilizing personnel, repairing damaged waterways, fertilizing support, availability of good seeds (type/variety, quantity, location, time, quality , prices), supporting tractors, machines supporting other preparation, harvesting, post-harvest activities, and including marketing assurance.
Revitalizing
Revitalizing is the Ministry of Agriculture’s move to encourage the attainment of goals by linking the Ministry of Agriculture with dynamic national and environmental development. All actors basically want to grow, but the sources of growth are often difficult to understand, so that the process of achieving goals becomes more difficult to achieve.
On that basis, the Ministry of Agriculture continues to include stakeholders in the special effort program. Through the Upsus program, the government is determined to realize food sovereignty in 2017. Various strategies and efforts are being made to increase the planted area and productivity in food production centers.
Renewing
Renewing is a new effort from the Ministry of Agriculture on the actor’s side. This relates to investing in human capital with new skills and new goals, enabling the Ministry of Agriculture to continue to implement announced progress. Its implementation involves 3 (three) elements, namely, creating a reward structure , building individual learning , and organizational development. This step will increase the dissemination of knowledge about new policies and strategies and create the capacity to adapt quickly.
Efforts to Strengthen Self-sufficiency
Achieving self-sufficiency in food requires enormous effort and energy to achieve it. This nation must not only be trapped in the definition of self-sufficiency which states that the ability to achieve 90% production of food needs is called achieving self-sufficiency.
The implementation, efforts to maintain food self-sufficiency so that it can continue on an ongoing basis at least until 2045, must be made harder so that the momentum does not return to the starting point and this nation’s energy is not drained to try to achieve self-sufficiency again.
The realization of food sovereignty as mandated in the 1945 Constitution, cannot stop at the status of food self-sufficiency at certain times, but self-sufficiency must continue to be preserved and even increased so that this country achieves a food surplus and is able to contribute to national food security and world food security.
The Problem of Realizing Food Self-Sufficiency in Indonesia
Positive population growth forces Indonesia to continue to increase rice production so that it can be self-sufficient. Meanwhile, uncontrolled floods and droughts and the high rate of conversion of paddy fields to other uses recently means that the risk of the country to stop rice production is often increasing.
The decline in the government’s financial ability to restore and expand irrigation networks has exacerbated production risk conditions. So it is very likely that in the future the country’s rice production will fall far below the level needed to meet the target of achieving self-sufficiency in rice. This means that there will be a scarcity of millions of tons of rice in Indonesia at that time.
Indonesia clearly understands that the path to sustainable national food security lies in food self-sufficiency, not rice self-sufficiency. That is, whether we like it or not, whether we like it or not, the people of this country must diversify their food if they don’t want to face the ‘food apocalypse’ in the future.
In fact, the government has long realized the importance of food diversification, and has even had various programs to promote it. However, an important matter that has long been neglected by the government is that the rice self-sufficiency program is not compatible with the food diversification program.
As long as rice is available anywhere, anytime at a relatively low price, as it is today, the Indonesian people will not be interested in reducing rice consumption and compensating by increasing their consumption of other foods, such as corn and sago.
The government should immediately make corrections to this wrong food policy. It seems that it is difficult for us to expect such a correction to occur in the near future. Self-sufficiency in rice has become an arena for satisfying a variety of different needs.
This is actually what makes the people of this country like rice, not because their tastes are rigid. Because, in fact, every day Indonesians consume food packages which are a mixture of rice and not rice. This means that there is room for the substitution of rice with non-rice in the food consumption packages of Indonesian citizens.
However, this substitution room has become very narrow at this time. As a result, nasi (rice) has become very generally controlled in the daily consumption package of the people of this country. This happens because the government has long implemented the wrong food policy.
There are parties who use it to advance political interests, there are various other parties who use it to receive economic rents . For industries that pay their workers using cheap wages, self-sufficiency in rice which claims the availability of rice using cheap prices is obviously very important. This is because low-paid workers are unlikely to be productive if their food needs are insufficient. In order for permanent workers to be productive even though they are paid cheaply, food prices must be cheap.
Meanwhile, for developed countries with huge food surpluses, it is important to support Indonesia in continuing to pursue self-sufficiency in rice through technical and financial assistance. By prioritizing rice production, Indonesia will be left behind in other food production, even though domestic demand is increasing, as is the national demand for rice.
The resulting national production deficit will become a fragile export market for surplus food production. Though, this explains why Indonesia is currently heavily dependent on import markets for expensive products such as corn and soybeans, as state media disclosed in late 2009. The only way out of this rice self-sufficiency trap is the government’s determination to end rice self-sufficiency and replace it with food self-sufficiency based on various foods.
Sinaumed’s, this is the discussion about what food self-sufficiency is. After reading this article, of course you understand how important food self-sufficiency is for a country. We also need to manage our food ingredients so they don’t run out quickly in the future.
If you want to learn more about food self-sufficiency, agriculture, or other economics, you can buy books available at sinaumedia. sinaumedia as #FriendsWithoutLimits has provided a variety of quality books that you can own. Come on Sinaumed’s, buy the book now!