RI warned of food shortages on decline in world rice output

Ary Hermawan, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali

With a further decline in world rice production, Indonesia, a major rice importer, could suffer food shortages in the coming years if it fails to boost rice production, an agricultural expert warns.

International Rice Research Institute development director Duncan Graham said Wednesday that high rice prices on the world market would also pose big problems for Indonesia in its efforts to secure rice supplies.

"The international rice price has doubled in the last two years. What if this continues and it doubles again?" he said to The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the World Rice Conference.

The international rice price, Duncan said, had already increased from about US$240 a ton to more than $300 a ton. "Today (experts) at this conference are now talking about the price going up to $1,000 a ton."

He said the international rice price was expected to increase because India, the world's largest rice producer and consumer after China, might need to import 5 million tons of rice over the next 12 months.

"This is a large amount of rice. If India buys that rice on the international market, what does that mean for Indonesia and the Philippines as rice importers? There are two things: one, it will push up the price even higher, making it more expensive for Indonesia, and two, there will not be enough rice to buy because India has taken it all," he explained.

In his address at the opening of the conference, the head of the State Logistics Agency, Mustafa Abubakar, said that Indonesia still needed to import rice to meet growing rice needs at home.

While Indonesia would stick to its import policy, increasing rice production would remain the top priority, he said.

Indonesia's rice imports fell from 6 million tons in 1998 to less than 1 million in 2004. The government increased the figure to more than 1 million tons this year due to harvest delays in some areas.

The staple food is very important to the country's economy and household food security, especially among the poor, who allocate about 30 percent of their total expenditure to rice.

Increases in farming costs and low rice prices have caused many farmers to turn to other crops in the hope of improving their incomes. This has become the main obstacle to increasing rice production.

Graham said that agriculture was now facing serious challenges from the effects of climate change resulting from global warming, including more floods and droughts than ever before, while at the same time many members of the younger generation around the world were abandoning agriculture for economic reasons.

"The big problem is that agriculture and farming have become less sexy. Nobody cares about them. Everybody has forgotten agriculture. Everybody is more excited about the IT industry, tourism and everything else. We are paying the price for forgetting about agriculture and food production," Graham said.