KKP Ready To Facilitate Seaweed-Based Biostimulan Circular Permits

The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (KKP) is ready to facilitate a seaweed-based distribution permit produced by the Mina Agar Makmur Cooperative in Karawang Regency, West Java.

The distribution permit in question is an organic fertilizer distribution permit registered through the Ministry of Agriculture which aims to provide certainty of protection for the environment, ensure quality, effectiveness and certainty of the circulating product formula.

"With distribution permits, later the costs incurred from there will be provided as part of concrete support. So that distribution permits can be directly processed for the public, yes, for Ministry of Agriculture permits and permits to be obtained from the KKP," said Director General of Strengthening Competitiveness for Marine and Fishery Products (PDSPKP) KKP Budi Sulistiyo when met in Karawang Regency, West Java, quoted from Antara, Saturday, October 5.

He said the presence of the KKP in supporting business actors in the marine and fisheries sector in this district includes coaching to licensing and collaboration across institutions.

Through the collaboration that was established and the KKP's concrete steps in supporting this glacilaria type seaweed-based business are expected to be able to attract investment and attract potential partners for the Mina To Makmur Cooperative.

On the same occasion, the Chairperson of the Mina Cooperative to prosper Usup Supriyatna said that his party had indeed experienced problems in marketing more extensive seaweed-based biostimulants for use in agricultural crops.

This is because the process of obtaining a distribution permit at the Ministry of Agriculture requires a fairly large cost of around Rp45 million.

Until now in one month, his party is able to produce 1,000 liters of seaweed-based biostimulants which are limited to only members of cooperatives, totaling around 70 members.

Biostimulan, which is priced at IDR 20,000 per liter, has now been piloted on several fishery commodities which include cydat, windu shrimp and milkfish.

Meanwhile, Expert Researcher at the Marine and Land Bioindustry Research Center of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Jamal Basmal revealed that the biostimulants that are free from seaweed as a result of his research were able to unravel the remaining feed so that the water quality was more maintained and had an effect on growth and increase in fish resistance.

He is prebiotic. Prebiotics are foods that we give to fish, it is hoped that all of them will be digested. If everything is digested, it means a little fess, if the fees are small, the ammonia is small, the fish is good," he explained.

The biostimulan that he has been examining since 2012, he said, is also able to provide micronutrients for fish and food crops in the form of rice and others.

The use of seaweed as a biostimulant material, he explained, was motivated by the potential for Indonesian seaweed at 9.2 million tons per year, while the use of this commodity for industry was only 5.4 million tons, so there were still around 3 to 4 million tons of seaweed that had not been utilized.

He also hopes that the use of biostimulants can boost the development of Indonesian organic foods which are fully free from pesticides or other chemicals.