The Agriculture Ministry has disbursed Rp 1.1 trillion (US$82.5 million) this year to boost the national cattle herd through its artificial insemination (Upsus SIWAB) program.

The program was officially launched on Tuesday at on agriculture education complex in Lelede, West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), which was attended by some 500 cattle farmers on Lombok Island.

The ministry’s director general of husbandry and animal health I Ketut Diarmita said the program was a government priority in the husbandry sector.

“The contribution of local livestock to the national supply has been relatively low so far. This program is part of the government’s intervention to improve livestock especially cattle,” Diarmita said.

He said the Rp 1.1 trillion was needed to fund facilities such as containers for frozen semen and field operations. He said through the program the government would target all breeding cows in their productive period through artificial insemination.

Data at the ministry, he said, showed that in previous years, the results from the artificial insemination program had not been good, with only 70 to 76 percent of the cows in their productive period becoming pregnant.

Upsus SIWAB, in which farmers are offered incentives and most importantly free artificial insemination for their cows,is expected to increase the pregnancy figure to 100 percent.

Through the program, Diarmita said, his office had a target of artificially inseminating some 4 millions cows nationwide. “So, we assume that by 2018 we will have 3 million additional calves from the program.”

NTB has been one of Indonesia’s cow production centers along with East Java, West Java, Central Java, Lampung and Bali. NTB will receive Rp 26 million from Upsus SIWAB, with a target of artificially inseminating 140,000 cows spread across the province’s eight regencies on Lombok and Sumabawa islands.

NTB Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin said the province, dubbed the “land of thousands of cows” was ready to implement the Upsus SIWAB program.

“We are committed to the success of the program because in NTB the husbandry sub-sector is a strategic part in the regional development program, especially in eradicating poverty, apart from the agriculture and tourism sectors,” Amin said.

The cattle herd in NTB currently amounts to 1.19 million. The province sends some 10,000 cows for breeding programs in other provinces and around 40,000 head of cattle to meet the national beef demand.

Amin said the provincial administration continued to encourage people not to make cow breeding a part-time job but rather to engage in it as a serious business with good prospects.

Abdul Martah, 52, a cattle farmer, said farmers were reluctant to artificially inseminate their cows because they had to pay Rp 50,000 to Rp 100,000 for the service while the success rate was low.

“With free artificial insemination, everyone is of course happy,” Martah said, adding that failure usually was due to farmers’ misinterpretation of their cows’ estrus period or damaged semen.

Artificial insemination officer Wirmaya, 40, of Central Lombok Husbandry Agency said the biggest challenge that staff like him faced was how to get to the cattle farm on time before the frozen semen was damaged prior to being inseminated.

“Until now we have not been able to use containers with liquid nitrogen to preserve the frozen semen while the locations we have to reach are normally far away,” he said, expressing the hope that with the Upsus SIWAB artificial insemination program proper containers and liquid nitrogen would ease the process.

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