T

he ministers of agriculture and trade should have felt the heat over the past few weeks as the prices of basic food commodities such as chili, garlic, onion, chicken, eggs and beef rose steeply.

Food price inflation, common during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri celebrations, has always been a serious concern for the government. But this year, even the President himself publicly showed his utter disappointment, chiding the ministers for their inability to control price hikes, which have been hurting mostly the fixed low-income groups of the people.

The recent increase in fuel prices and the weakening rupiah also played a role in skyrocketing prices, because of the country'€™s heavy dependence on imported food commodities such as garlic, corn, wheat, soybean, sugar, various other produce and beef.

Yet worsening this food-inflation is the erratic, poorly implemented import policies such as the restrictive measures on imports of horticultural produce. We think as long as the government continues to depend on ad hoc policies as import measures to check food commodity prices, we will remain vulnerable to seasonal bouts of wild food price fluctuations.

The government should implement integrated, long-term efforts to increase domestic supplies of various food commodities as the number of middle-class consumers with strong purchasing power is projected to increase to more than 135 million within the next decade.

What we mean by integrated efforts here are continuous programs to empower farmers through extension services and farm inputs provided through cooperatives and other grassroots economic organizations and to improve rural infrastructure. The focus should be on improving transportation infrastructure to facilitate the movement of farm produce across the vast archipelago, on providing agricultural extension services and access for farmers to financing and on developing high-yielding parent seeds.

Certainly, traditional retail markets need improved hygiene and sanitary standards, infrastructure (pavement, roads, buildings and stalls), cold chain systems; because they will create an efficient system linking producers, processors and packers to the modern procurement system.

The success stories of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand in developing strong agricultural sectors show the important role of contract-farming plans between farmer associations or farmer cooperatives and large supermarket chains under government supervision.

Under such contract-farming programs supermarket chains can act as development agents for horticulture farmers, providing them with extension services, farm inputs, financing and market outlets.

Local administrations also play a crucial role by facilitating business linkages between farmers, wholesalers and supermarkets through business meetings, exhibitions and business visit programs.

The ministries of trade and agriculture should cooperate in providing market-intelligence information to those engaged in the supply chain of agriculture.