Jakarta, InfoPublik – Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture stated that in general we have enough supply of shallot and red chili. However, the price of shallot and various chili peppers are still surging in recent times.
Head of Agricultural Research Muhammad Shakir said his office has performed a number of approaches to realize food self-sufficiency and to anticipate price fluctuations, including: on farm management to meet production targets and non-technical approaches to manage harvest, distribution, marketing and policy. "Prices of shallot and chili during January-March were rising due to unfavorable weather. In the last two years we have aggressively disseminated the the use of technology to deal with harvest failures," Shakir said at a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday (22/3).
According to him, the government had provided crop varieties and off season cultivation technology, as well as storage and processing technology during excessive production to anticipate rainy and dry seasons when prices are skyrocketing.
Shakir added, high prices of shallot and chili is caused by non-technical issues such as price in merchant level and distribution channels, not technical or production issues.
"There are technical and non-technical factors. While the problem of shallot and chili is non-technical ones. Currently we have developed new varieties of shallot and chili, namely the amphibian species, which are resistant to rainy and dry season," he said.
He confirmed that the prices of shallot and chili did not soar due to decline in productions. "We have production surplus, but we have non-technical problems. Price increased because of unequal distribution," he said.
In addition, Agriculture Ministry had provided stock seed but farmers used extension seed instead. Currently, stock seeds are not yet massively used and we need efforts to disseminate the use of stock seed. "We will provide stock seed, while farmer must breed not only the staple food such as rice and corn, but also for horticulture varieties," he explained.
Non-technical approaches are mainly conducted in managing the distribution from production centers, product distribution among regions, supply chain improvement, as well as regulations stipulation to permanently ensure the sufficiency of production and distribution.
"Our supply and production are sufficient, but the distribution is not well organized and need to be optimized, since we have new production central we have not disseminated. In the future, the technological society will survive," he said.
According to Agriculture Ministry’s data of production, based on current planted area, the production of cabe rawit (small hot chilies) in March was 78,889 tons with domestic need of 53,810 tons , big red chili production was 101,005 tons with domestic need of 75,762, while production of shallot reached 90,133 tons with 80,070 tons need. (Translator:Sugiarti)
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