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Salt farmers: Forced to choose between quality or competitiveness
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Farmers harvst salt in Bunder village , Pamekasan, East Java. The Industry Ministry estimates that salt demand will reach 3.5 million tons this year, about 1.1 million tons of which will go to industrial buyers. (Antara/Saiful Bahri)
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ocal salt farmers say they are caught between a rock and a hard place, having to choose to either improve the quality of their product or keep prices at a level low enough to compete with an influx of imported salt in the domestic market.
With the existing quality, farmers can sell their products at prices far below those of imported salt, which is favored by consumers, but improving the quality for industrial purposes would require further processing of the salt, which would be costly for farmers and make the local salt more expensive than imported salt.
Indonesian Association of Salt Industries (AIPGI) chairman Tony Tanduk said there were only 26,000 hectares of salt farms in Indonesia, half of the ideal figure of 50,000 ha. Many of the salt farms were owned my smallholder farmers, meaning the size of the farms was mostly far below the ideal 1,000 ha.
“The quality of local salt is generally low because it is under-processed. The salt needs further processing to increase its quality, such as through gradual crystallization or vaporization,” Tony said to reporters in Jakarta on Aug. 6. “Nevertheless, our main hurdle is the availability of salt farms.”
Salt used in manufacturing requires a sodium chloride content of 97 percent, whereas most domestic salt has only 94 percent or less, according to the Industry Ministry.
The lack of quality has dragged down the local salt price to between Rp 500,000 (US$35) and Rp 1 million per ton, which is much cheaper than imported salt that sells at $50 to $55 per ton.
However, improving the quality of local salt would require more processing steps, pushing up the price to a figure that’s even higher than imported salt, Tony said.
