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Extended rice aid program could harm farmers, association warns
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Quenched hectares: A farmer plows his rice field in Bulungcangkring village, Kudus regency, Central Java, on Sept. 26, 2023. Farmers in the village have planted rice on 700 hectares of land despite an ongoing drought, thanks to water from the nearby Logung dam. (Antara/Yusuf Nugroho)
T
he government has opted to extend its in-kind rice aid program to June of next year, but a farmers’ association has warned that the policy could harm the farmgate price of the commodity, negatively affecting domestic producers.
The aid program, which uses imported stocks of rice, was supposed to end in December after the government extended it multiple times from early this year.
“If [the government] keeps on giving rice aid – [and] we know the stock comes from imports – it will put pressure on prices at the farmers’ level,” said Dwi Andreas Santosa, who chairs the Association of Indonesian Seed Banks and Farmer Technology (AB2TI), on Tuesday.
Dwi, who is also an expert at the Bogor Agriculture Institute (IPB), said the government should end the program in February. Continuing past that month could interfere with the harvest season, he said, which was expected to fall in March amid delays resulting from the ongoing El Niño weather phenomenon.
Read also: RI's rice reserve not sufficient to weather El Niño next year
Data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS) shows that yearly domestic rice production peaked in March and April in the past two years.
The government has decided to import some 3.3 million tonnes of rice this year and plans to purchase another 2 million tonnes in 2024, Dwi said.
