President Launches Food Estate to Suppress Food Loss

President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo (Jokowi) launched a mango-based food estate in Gresik, East Java, Monday (22/8/). In addition, he also inaugurated the taxi of agricultural tools and machines (Alsintan). This step aims to reduce food loss.

Jokowi hopes that the food barns can be integrated with several supporting infrastructures that have been built by the government.

“We hope that this food estate is owned by the people, some is privately owned and we want it to be integrated with the reservoir built here, there is a pond, there is a food estate, so the public can get it, the private sector can also move,” said Jokowi. in his statement after the launch, Monday (22/8/2022).

In addition, Jokowi also hopes that the mango-based food barn can produce mango production not only for domestic needs but also for export purposes, such as to the Middle East, China, Japan, and Europe.

Therefore, Jokowi said that the mango-based food barn would also be developed in several areas in the country.

“Later, it will not only be in Gresik Regency but also in other regencies which roughly have marginal land conditions suitable for mangoes,” said the President.

He assessed that the mango-based food barn in Gresik was well organized. However, the President hopes for quality control assistance to ensure product quality is following the standards set by buyers.

“I’m happy to see that the management that has been embedded here is very good and we hope that later there will also be quality control QC assistance from the buyers so that the quality level will increase,” said the President.

Furthermore, Jokowi also launched the alsintan taxi which is a program from the Ministry of Agriculture to help provide agricultural tools and machinery (alsintan) independently by business actors in the agricultural sector through the facilitation of People’s Business Credit (KUR) assistance.

“I think there will be a lot of regions, villages, provinces, regencies, there will be many farmers who want to buy agricultural tools and machines, be it rice mill units [RMU], dryers, combine harvesters, tractors, etc. another way with the machine-gun taxi pattern,” said the President.

Through this program, Jokowi believes that the alsintan taxi program can reduce food loss from each production by 6 to 7 percent. According to him, currently, the food loss production rate in Indonesia is still quite high, around 12 to 13 percent.

“If you use a modern rice mill unit, you can reduce the loss of about 6-7 percent of damaged rice, and that 6 percent can already be used to repay the existing RMU machine,” he continued.

Regarding the workforce in agriculture, Jokowi sees that some professions are lacking, so they need a replacement, namely machinery for harvesting and RMU.

It is known that several ministers such as Minister of Agriculture Syahrul Yasin Limpo (SYL), Minister of State Secretary Pratikno, and Minister of PUPR Basuki Hadimuljono also accompanied the launch of the food barn.