Excessive imports will kill the national food production to meet the national demand."Yogyakarta (ANTARA News) - Uncontrolled imports of food commodities are feared to foil the national food sovereignty, professor of Gajah Mada University`s Faculty of Economy Mochammad Maksum said here on Monday.
"With a serious effort, sufficient national food production can be meet. Excessive imports will kill the national food production to meet the national demand," Maksum noted.
Related to the case of the failure to achieve food sovereignty, the professor said pointed out that it could be seen from the effort to meet the national beef demand.
He said that even without beef import, national beef supply would still be met, because some areas in the provinces of West and East Nusa Tenggara had big potential of beef supply.
"By relying on beef supply from East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia should have sufficient supply of beef every year without being imported," Maksum said.
But he admitted that infrastructure facilities for the distribution of food commodities were still inadequate.
Therefore said the government should set its focus on strengthening the national food sector by directing it to domestic self sufficiency in food.
He added that self sufficiency in food could be realized by allocating greater funds on agriculture food sector.
"More funds should have been allocated for the self sufficiency of agriculture food sector rather than giving zero percent excise on soy bean as happened last year," Maksum said.
Further, he opined that the government was now still oriented to food security but not food sovereignty, because imports were still carried out excessively regardless of food self-sufficiency.
(Uu.O001/F001)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
