Downstream Food Is Expected To Support State Growth And Revenue

JAKARTA - Downstreaming of the food sector is expected to further support the growth and income of the state compared to downstreaming of the mining and mineral sectors.

Minister of Agriculture Syahrul Yasin Limpo said this was to respond to President Joko Widodo's speech at the 2023 MPR Annual Session which stated that the government would downstream non-mineral commodities such as palm oil, seaweed, and coconut.

"We are still in the process of downstreaming the road, not only downstream mining and minerals, but downstream food that will support more," said the Minister of Agriculture to ANTARA when met at the Directorate General of Horticulture Building of the Ministry of Agriculture, Jakarta, Wednesday, August 16.

As a form of seriousness in realizing downstreaming in agriculture, he continued, he has ordered every directorate at the Ministry of Agriculture to spur downstreaming in 51 commodities out of a total of 300 food commodities that have been lost.

"Commodities in the horticultural sector exist, food crops exist, plantations exist, livestock exists. We are now concentrating on approximately 51 main downstreaming," said SYL, his nickname.

In detail, superior downstream commodities at the Directorate General of Plantation are palm oil, coffee, cocoa, atsiri oil, and coconut. Then, for the main downstream commodities in the Horticulture Directorate, there are shallots, chilies, bananas, pineapple and various medicinal plants.

"Later, on September 24, we will launch regarding this downstreaming, where there are 400 MSMEs throughout Indonesia involved and it is really intervened by the Directorate of Horticulture," said Director General of Horticulture Prihasto Setyanto as quoted by ANTARA.

Then, for priority downstreaming at the Directorate General of Infrastructure and Agricultural Facilities, including eggs into egg flour, chickens become nuggets and sausages so that milk is processed into various cheeses.

Director General of Infrastructure and Agricultural Facilities Ali Jamil said that eggs will be processed into egg flour, because so far egg flour and liquid egg flour are used by the import 100 percent industry.

The manufacture of egg flour is also motivated by excessive domestic egg production of up to 300 thousand tons per year.

"To make it stable and we develop our domestic production, directed to egg flour. Buyers other than domestically are also for exports for our neighboring industries such as Singapore have asked," he said.

The priority downstream in food crop sub-sebtors are processed rice, corn, cassava, sweet potatoes and green beans to sorghum.

So far, the downstream market for special rice has recorded exports of around 3,000 tons per year, sweet potatoes in the form of sticks and other processing to Japan, processed green beans, especially to China with a total of 35 thousand tons per year.