We must admit that due to budget constraints, soybean farmers often harvest their produce in unripe condition when the color is still green and sell their soybean by mixing the yellow and green beans. In such conditions, tempeh producers would not prJakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Agriculture is currently making efforts to improve the quality standard of local soybeans to reach the level acceptable for local tofu and tempe producers, a ministry's official stated.
The ministry's director of legumes and tuber crops, Yuris Tiyanto, noted that quality improvement is necessary to rectify issues of quality disparity observed among local soybean products and unstandardized quality standards.
"We must admit that due to budget constraints, soybean farmers often harvest their produce in unripe condition when the color is still green and sell their soybean by mixing the yellow and green beans. In such conditions, tempeh producers would not prefer the local producer," Tiyanto pointed out here on Tuesday.
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To address this issue, the ministry will improve the quality standardization of soybeans and the post-harvest process, he noted while adding that the improvement will be consistent with the current efforts to bolster production to reach the soybean production target of one million tons.
"We have begun the process this year by attempting better post-harvest methods. The micro-credit programme (KUR) would provide farmers with more incentives to not harvest their soybean while unripe and enhance the final product quality. With an improved post-harvest process, God willing, tempe producers would be satisfied with the local products," Tiyanto remarked.
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The director also drew attention to frequent complaints received from farmers that local soybean products were more expensive than the imported ones despite the latter being of better quality than local products.
He clarified that local farmers could not reduce their selling price further below the producer's reference price, which currently stands at Rp8,500 (US$0.59) for one kilogram.
"The price of imported soybean products is often below the reference price of Rp8,500. Currently, as China bought most of the soybean products from Brazil and the United States, Indonesia could not buy sufficient quantities of soybean. In Indonesia, the local soybean product is sold at Rp9,000 to Rp10,000 for one kilogram," Tiyanto stated.
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Translator: Aditya Ramadhan, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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