Reviving local foods, achieving sustainable food system

A farmer tends to a farm as Mount Sinabung spews ash into the sky, as seen from Karo, North Sumatra on March 2, 2021. (Agence France Presse/Bahari Tarigan)

Nirarta Samadhi and Agnes Mallipu (The Jakarta Post)

PREMIUM

Jakarta ● Sat, October 16, 2021

Most Indonesians tend to consume and rely on homogenous foods, or on a single staple food. This tendency has had implications for the government’s food policy decisions. For example, the national government imported 41,000 tons of rice in July 2021. Last year, the Jakarta provincial administration imported 130,000 tons of sugar.

In Papua, it is typical for the local administration to worry about the insufficiency of local rice production as fewer than 20 percent of Papuans consume sago and tubers; which are traditionally the local source of carbohydrates in the region.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the fragility of Indonesia’s food and land-use systems. While the government has implemented different policies over time in different areas, from central to provincial levels, with emergency public activity restrictions, the widely disrupted supply chains have had a deleterious impact on food supply, markets and livelihoods.