Tropentag, October 6 - 8, 2009 in Hamburg "Biophysical and Socio-economic Frame Conditions for the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources"

Indonesian Food Security Assessment

University of Kassel, Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, Germany

Abstract

In 2008, up to 38 million Indonesian live under poverty. Food supply in some parts of Indonesia up to today is still insecure. Most people rely on their own crops harvest. With stagnating agriculture productivity, many people are unfavourably affected. But the national food production data actually shows contradictive figures. Recent statistic shows that the production from 1999 until 2006 Indonesian food production is stable between 50-57 million tons in total. The total consumption is only 32.7 million tons, assuming per capita consumption is 141 kg year. Therefore, food insecurity in some part of Indonesia is caused by other factors than insufficient production.
This literature review is looking for the potential causes of food insecurity in the household level. There is abundance of statistical data from Indonesian government, Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme that is sufficient to create preliminary assumption of the potential factors contributing to the food insecurity in Indonesia.
On the production level, the potential factors of food insecurity are decreasing of arable land due to alteration to other purposes than agriculture, long drought season and flood due to the climate change, availability of seed, plant protection and natural catastrophes. On the distribution level, there is a high price disparity between consumers and farmers due to the lack of distribution policy, low transparency of food production and inadequate transportation systems. Furthermore, low post harvest technology decreases the quality and the quantity of the commodity. On the consumption level, low accessibility of food caused by poverty and undesirable dietary pattern stemming from the food culture. The result of Desirable Dietary Pattern (DDP) study shows that the demand of cereals is still high. Even though Indonesians has sluggishly changed their food consumption proportion and energy intake from mainly cereals to include more oil and fat in the diet, resulted an increase in daily calorie consumption from 66.2 to 71.8 (DDP score) between 1993-2002, this may not reflect an increase in animal products consumption since Indonesians consume a lot of fried foods. Therefore following researches will look for the possibility of indigenous knowledge utilisation in reaching adequate nutritional level.

Keywords: Food culture, food security, food supply chain

Contact Address: Wahyudi David, University of Kassel, Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, Norbahnhof Str 1a, 37213 Witzenhausen, Germany, e-mail: wahyudidavidyahoo.co.id