JAKARTA - The National Food Agency will immediately establish a policy on the reference price for local soybean purchases in order to help farmers and increase domestic production.
Head of the National Food Agency Arief Prasetyo Adi said the determination of the soybean benchmark price would be able to spur farmers to be more enthusiastic about planting so that they could increase domestic production.
"According to the President's direction, we will immediately prepare the price policy, of course by inviting all relevant stakeholders to sit together," said Arief in his statement quoted by Antara, Tuesday, September 20.
This step is a follow-up to President Joko Widodo's directives in the Limited Meeting (Ratas) on Increasing the Productivity of the University at the Merdeka Palace on Monday 19 September.
Arief said the price range for soybeans is around Rp. 10,000 per kilogram. Prices in this range must be able to provide benefits for farmers. However, this price setting must go hand in hand with the increased productivity of the resulting soybeans.
The President in his directive emphasized that the need for soybeans in Indonesia does not depend on imports. Therefore, the Ministry of Agriculture (Kementan) is asked to increase domestic soybean production.
One of the efforts made is to plant superior varieties of seeds, and if necessary, use the seeds of genetic engineering products (genetically modified organization/GMO). By using GMO seeds, it is hoped that the production of soybeans per hectare can increase from 1.6 to 2 tons per hectare to about 3.5 to 4 tons per hectare.
To encourage an increase in soybean production, the government through the Ministry of Agriculture is preparing to expand soybean planting land by pursuing a target of up to 600 thousand hectares of production in stages. One of them is through the optimization of land in Konawe, Southeast Sulawesi province, around 30 thousand hectares.
To increase the competitiveness of domestic soybean production, Arief also said the need for the implementation of the soybean import tariff policy, the amount of which will be determined immediately.
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