"This is a kind of international cooperation to safeguard our food security particularly supply chains by among others strengthening ASEAN+3 (Japan, South Korea and China) networks and cooperating with the United States known for its success in safeguarding food security," he said here on Monday.
He said Japan was one of the countries with which Indonesia would cooperate in food security. Japan has a commitment to stabilize food prices in case of natural disasters that may disrupt food supplies.
"This cooperation deals not only with emergency rice reserves but also with revitalization of agricultural sector, irrigation networks and agricultural institutions. Our target is that we will no longer import (rice). But before Indonesia is convinced that it will have a rice stock of 10 million in 2014 the government still has another option," he said.
He said the government would prepare three teams from three ministries to realize the cooperation. "There are three teams we will prepare, namely a team from the agriculture ministry to revitalize the agricultural sector, a team from the trade ministry to safeguard supply and production chains as well as import option and a team to safeguard demand chains particularly to protect the poor and vulnerable people when global food prices are on the increase," he said.
The three teams would become part of crisis management protocol when food crisis happened, he said.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
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