Anticipating The Global Food Crisis, Ministry Of Agriculture: Keeping Production Is Not Enough If There Is No Diversification

Illustration (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Agriculture stated that the diversification of food consumed by the community must be carried out as an effort to anticipate the threat of a global food crisis, especially in the condition of the population which continues to grow every year.

Director Serelia of the Directorate General of Food Crops at the Ministry of Agriculture Ismail Wahab said maintaining domestic food production would not be enough to meet food needs with a population that continues to grow every year.

"It is not enough just to maintain production, if there is no diversification of staple foods, with an increase in the population of 1.49 percent every year, we will have difficulties in the long run," said Ismail as quoted by Antara, Tuesday, August 9.

In addition, he said, Indonesia's agricultural land is shrinking with the decrease in fertile land on the island of Java which has changed its function to non-agricultural infrastructure.

According to Ismail, rice consumption per capita should be lower and replaced with alternative staple foods which are also abundant in Indonesia and have high nutritional content such as cassava, sago, and sorghum.

Ismail said that the alternative food for the Indonesian people besides rice is food sourced from wheat such as noodles and bread.

In fact, Indonesia's wheat is met from imports because the land is not suitable for growing wheat.

The current world wheat price has tripled as the world's largest wheat producer, Ukraine, is experiencing a geopolitical conflict with Russia.

In addition, other wheat producing countries began to limit exports to meet their domestic needs.

"Wheat itself is not very suitable for us, so try substituting it with cassava, sago, and sorghum. Sorghum is in the same family as wheat, and is healthier than wheat," said Ismail.

He explained, sorghum does not contain gluten as in wheat.

Therefore, sorghum is not suitable for making bread because there is no gluten content that makes bread rise.

However, currently food manufacturers are starting to promote healthy food products without gluten.

Therefore, sorghum is very suitable to be used as a healthy food product without gluten to replace processed products from wheat.