KEDELAI DAN POLITIK PANGAN

Abstract

Soybean is one of strategic food crops contributing in the domestic economy, namely enhancing farmers’ income and promoting industry such as tofu, tempeh, and soy sauce, among others. Indonesia is a net importer of soybean to meet its domestic demand. The country only produce soybean around 25 percent of its national consumption. Increases in soybean import price took place in 2008, 2012 and 2013 and made the domestic industry and the government panic. Learning from these experiences, Indonesia has to formulate its food politics in addressing food self sufficiency as a part of food security. Policy, planning and program of food crops development including soybean is not well managed. Predicted soybean production and import volumes show significant differences with the actual ones. Soybean production tends to decrease and soybean import tends to increase since 2004 up to now. Soybean self sufficiency deals with such issues, i.e. low productivity, low technology application, land use competition, high risk, non irrigated areas, price fluctuation, low incentive for investment, and climate change influences. Indonesia should establish market intelligence and formulate a better business environment, land consolidation, sufficient budget allocation, infrastructure development (e.g. irrigation, farm roads, transportation, and economic infrastructure) and better credit access to farmers for food development. The most important issue is returning the authority of food management to the central government to ensure effectiveness of food development which requires commitment from all stakeholders including the government and the parliament. Soybean issue is a good experience useful as a shock therapy and a test case for food management in Indonesia.