Minister: Wide Needed For Soybean Plantations

Jakarta, July 27 (ANTARA) - Agriculture Minister Suswono said at least 500,000 hectares of farmlands are needed to significantly increase the country`s soybean production. Scarcity of soybean supply has become a national issue over the past week with tempe and tahu producers taking to street in protest of the soaring price of that commodity. Tempe and tahu, popular side dishes made of soybean have disappeared from the market in the past four days as producers chose to stop production. "The only way to cope with the problem is expansion of farm lands to grow soybean," Suyono said here on Friday. He said ideally the country has around 1.5 million hectares of land for soybean plantations. Lands available for farming is not adequate hampering program to reach self sufficiency in soybean supply , he said. He said if lands are available the program to reach self sufficiency in soybean supply could come to reality in 2014. He said according to the National Land Office (BPN) there are 2 million hectares of lands to be appropriated for farming. However, so far only 13,000 hectares of the lands have been used for farming , he said. In addition many farmers chose to grow corn rather than soybean, as corn is considered more profitable, he said. An expert from the National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan) Harry Is Mulyana said farmers are not encouraged to grow soybean as they are not well protected by the government. The farmers should be protected such by setting benchmark price for soybean to guarantee profit margin for the growers, Harry said. Batan already has the technology to produce high yield varieties of soybean , he said, adding but the government failed to utilize the technology that could have helped in the program to reach self sufficiency in soybean, he said.