Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest producers — and consumers — of rice, but in the interests of public health and food sustainability the government has launched an ambitious drive to wean people off their beloved staple.
For ordinary Indonesians like Andi Santoso, a 23-year-old student, the thought of going without rice for a day, as the government is proposing, is almost unthinkable.
“I eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” he said, a little bemused. “If I don’t eat rice, I feel like I haven’t eaten. What else can I eat?”
PHOTO:AFP
Indonesian Welfare Ministry Secretary-General Indroyono Soesilo says the answer is simple, even if it sounds crazy to a nation that produces more than 40 million tonnes of rice a year and consumes around 33 million tonnes.
He likens the push to alternative sources of nutrition to asking a smoker to give up cigarettes.
“We urge Indonesians to kick their habit of eating rice. We need to diversify our diets. Many Indonesians still think that if they don’t eat rice, they don’t eat well,” he said.
“Indonesia produces 66 kinds of other carbohydrates, such as corn, sago, cassava, sweet potato, potato and others. These all can replace rice for two out of three meals a day, for example. We urge Indonesians to diversify their eating habits from childhood,” he said
With 240 million hungry mouths to feed, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country. The average Indonesian consumes more than 100kg of rice a year, more than the Japanese and Chinese.
Improving farming techniques and a post-colonial food security drive have seen the country go from being the world’s biggest rice importer in the 1960s to self--sufficiency today.
However, while rice is plentiful and cheap, the government is worried that the nation is becoming too dependent on a single crop.
Other concerns include population growth and the shrinking availability of arable land due to factors like urbanization and rising sea levels from global warming, which the government fears could slash Indonesia’s rice production.
However, for millions of poor Indonesians, rice is not just a food staple, it’s a livelihood that sustains life and deserves worship as a gift from the gods.
“Rice is life. It gives jobs and food,” says Djati Kusuma, the “king” of Cigugur, a village in the middle of Java where the annual Seren Taun festival celebrates Dewi Sri, the goddess of rice.
For three days the villagers gather “to ask for her protection in order to avert disaster and to get an abundant harvest,” he said at the festival last month.
No one in Cigugur appears to be thinking of growing anything different on the verdant green paddy fields that flourish in the rich volcanic soil around the village.
The people in Java’s rice-growing villages see the grain as something noble, occupying an elevated seat in the agricultural hierarchy compared to roots like cassava, which is associated with poverty.
Industrial growers however are rapidly seeing the potential of crops like cassava and sago for their dual uses as food and biofuels.
A September report by the International Rice Research Institute and the US-based Asia Society said Asian countries need to sharply increase and better manage rice stocks to improve food security in a region where 65 percent of the world’s hungry live.
Asia’s rice-producing areas are home to nearly 560 million extremely poor people, who live on less than US$1.25 a day.
About 90 percent of rice is grown in the region, on more than 200 million farms.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
RSS