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Modern methods required for salt self-sufficiency
Despite the fact that Indonesia has the second-longest coastline in the world, it has failed to produce enough salt for its people
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espite the fact that Indonesia has the second-longest coastline in the world, it has failed to produce enough salt for its people. Traditional salt production and a lack of commercial awareness has become a persistent problem in the country’s salt business.
Indonesia is facing a crisis in salt supply with the import of 75,000 tons of table salt from Australia last month. PT Garam, which was established to build self-sufficiency in salt production, ironically orchestrated the import.
The salt price in the country escalated in July as salt farmers were only able to produce 6,200 tons of salt because of adverse weather conditions. Meanwhile, nationwide demand stands at between 100,000 tons to 112,000 tons every month.
“The salt price at the consumer level peaked at Rp 8,600 [US$0.65] per kilogram in August from about Rp 6,000 per kg from June to July,” Oke Nurwan, the Trade Ministry’s foreign trade director general, said on Wednesday.
From 2011 to 2015, salt shortages were not seen as farmers were always able to met domestic demand. This was due in large part to favorable climate conditions rather than human efficiency.
Indonesia only has a few provinces, like East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku, that have good potential to produce salt due to low rainfall in the area and enough bare land for salt farming.
“In 2015, salt farmers produced 2.9 million tons of salt per year, way above the domestic need,” Mohammad Hasan, the chariman of the East Java branch of the Salt Farmers Association (HMPG), said.
In the potential areas, the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has encouraged farmers to integrate and expand their land to boost productivity. The ministry also supports farmers with warehouses to store the yield.
“Since 2015, the ministry has built at least 12 warehouses in Madura, Pamekasan and Indramayu,” the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry’s director general for territorial sea management, Brahmantya Satyamurti, said.
With the warehouses, farmers should be able to keep their salt safe without being worried about the yield shrinking because of rainfall.
But unfortunately the reality shows the opposite, as salt production has plunged. The culprit is climate change, which has affected those areas. Furthermore, farmers failed to anticipate these problems by stocking supply at warehouses — as the government expected.
Responding to this, an expert from Hasanuddin University, Sudirman Saad, who is also a former commissioner at PT Garam, suggested that the government encourage private companies to build salt manufacturing plants that do not depend on the climate.
“In a place near Shanghai, there is a factory that can produce 2.9 million tons of salt per year without having to care about weather anomalies. The content of the salt can also be adjusted,” he said.
This, he further said, could solve the problem of salt shortages as local farmers alone were no longer enough to keep up with the increasing domestic salt demand. “Hopefully people from the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry will build this kind of factory,” he added.
