The climbing price of rice and the sluggish rice procurement by the State Logistics Agency point to the complexity of the rice problem.
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Kompas/P Raditya Mahendra Yasa
A farmer fertilizes his paddy field on Monday (4/12) in Donorejo village of Karangtengah district, Demak regency, Central Java, to increase rice production. Other than pests, farmers face many threats their harvest, including floods. Their productivity also depends on seed quality and the availability of fertilizer.
The climbing price of rice and the sluggish rice procurement by the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) point to the complexity of the rice problem.
The complex rice issue has been covered in this daily since Monday (4/12). For Indonesia, rice is not simply a food commodity, but also concerns social, political, and economic problems.
As it is a staple food, the government has always maintained rice production and prices. A rice shortage could become a troublesome political issue for the government. Escalating rice prices will give rise to inflation, because rice is still the most important expenditure for low-middle income and poor households. This group is very large. The World Bank report published on Monday (4/12) said that 45 percent of the population that had been deemed no longer poor or vulnerable had been reclassified as poor, and that 35 percent of the population were poor – or roughly 200 million people.
Rice is produced by small-scale farmers that have an average planting area of only 6,678 square meters per farming household. At the same time, they are also rice consumers, whose welfare must be improved through the provision of pricing incentives.
The government has undertaken many efforts to increase rice production and elevate farmers\' welfare. The Agriculture Ministry has also launched an extensification program to create new paddy fields as well as intensification, providing seed and fertilizer subsidies, repairing irrigation channels, building dams and distributing tractor aid to reduce labor costs as the largest expenditure. On the supply side, the government has also regulated prices by setting the highest retail price for medium-quality rice.
These efforts are based on a 50-year-old rice paradigm, but as conditions have changed, there is an urgent need to reevaluate the rice policy.
First and foremost, production and consumption data must be realigned. Accurate data will determine the direction of the policy.
It is high time for the government to establish a policy that meets current conditions with a view to the future, since today’s conditions are completely different from when the first rice policy was introduced in the mid-1960s. What is needed now is a food policy that emphasizes the importance of the nutritional value of food commodities to improve the quality of the Indonesian people.
As part of the food policy, rice production must meet the demand. The government manages rice production only for the poor. If the government intends to be self-sufficient in food commodities, rice must be produced only in those regions that have a comparative advantage.
