Govt Must Overcome Three Problems In Food Sector

Jakarta, Dec 3 (Antara) - The government has to overcome three big problems in food economy in Indonesia, Bustanul Arifin, a professor of agricultural economic science at the Lampung University, said. "To realize the country`s national food sovereignty, the government has to overcome three big problems in the food economic chain," Arifin told a national symposium on the strengthening of the country`s chain of food resilience. He said that the three big problems were the marginalization of the agricultural sector, price increase which was not enjoyed by producers at the farmers level, and low food diversification. Arifin who is also the chairman of the working group of the Food Resilience Council, said that the food sector was politically marginalized. There is a misleading practice in efforts to reach the food self-reliance target where imports still dominated the country`s food consumption sector. The implementation of policies is also weak, a fact which is worsened by the inability of local governments to understand policies in the food sector, he said. As a result, Arifin argued, about 52 percent of water resources in the upstream area became problematic, subsidy is still far from the target and agricultural land conversion reached 100 thousand hectares a year. The second problem, he said, is the market for food production which is not symmetric as indicated in the fact that price increases of agricultural products are not enjoyed by producers in the farmers level. He said that the third problem was low food diversities as a result of concentration on rice so that dependence on rice now was difficult to overcome. Arifin reminded that the problem of food diversities contributed to the high composition of poverty in rural areas and bad food and nutritional conditions. Therefore, Arifin called on the government to conduct a special intervention into the agricultural food sector, agrarian reforms, infrastructure, increasing farmers` capacity, expansion of farm lands and correct target of subsidy. Besides that, the government should also optimize its research and development in the face of increasing complexity in the food sector.