Restoring the Glory of Indonesian Plantation

Business Action, Jakarta - Since colonial times, plantation commodities such as sugar, tea, coffee, rubber, cocoa, palm oil and spices have become the mainstay of the export of colonial government.

At that time, Indonesia was once the world's largest producer of sugar and rubber, as well as coffee and tea in the world's two and three ranks.

Currently, Indonesia is still very well known as a major producer of six plantation commodities (coffee, cocoa, rubber, sugarcane sugar, tea and palm oil). Involving more than 9 million smallholder plantation households, or about 36 million people, living in rural and state borders with a total area of about 20 million hectares.

In terms of production, Indonesia ranks the world's largest only in oil palm commodities; While rubber ranked second after Thailand; Coffee ranked fourth after left Brazri, Vietnam, and India; And Cocoa ranked third after Ivory Coast and Ghana, as well as tea performance is decreasing so that Indonesia's rank as a world tea producer country dropped drastically from rank four to seven.

Even for sugar cane, Indonesia is now the third largest importer of sugar in the world. However, in the future, Indonesia has great strength because it has all the potential of the above plantation commodities (palm oil, cocoa, coffee, tea, and sugar cane), which is not owned by Malaysia which has only oil palm and rubber, Thailand is rubber and Cane and a little coconut sawrt, Vietnam only rubber and coffee, or Côte d'Ivoire that only has Cocoa.

On the other hand, the condition of the plantation business, except for oil palm, has declined significantly in the last five years due to lower commodity prices, relatively low average productivity and unfriendly climatic conditions. This even as quoted from the press release 'Restoring the Glory of Plantation Indonesia' when in Restaurant Dua Nyonya Senayan, Jakarta.

This can be seen from the growth of some major plantation commodities such as rubber 11.4 billion USD in 2011 to USD 3.4 billion USD (2016); Tea 0.16 million USD (2011) to 0.11 million USD (2016); As salvaged by a significant rise in production production, resulting in foreign exchange generated at 17.7 billion USD in 2011 and a slight increase to 18.1 billion USD in 2106 Production growth has increased sharply in the past five years in palm oil 43% , But very small in rubber (56%), coffee (10%), and even negative for cocoa (-7.8%), tea (-4.5%). The extent of commodity areas generally grows stagnant and even negative, except for oil palm and cocoa growing above 5% years.

Plantation Commodity Development Program and Food Security.

A more intensive presence of the government to Restore the Glory of Indonesian Plantations on a global level is indispensable, because of the large number of smallholder planters who depend on plantation commodities. This is in line with the Government Work Cabinet's Nawacita program. One of the important programs that society needs from the government is increasing the productivity of smallholder plantations, through the rejuvenation of crops. The community plantation rejuvenation program will also be able to respond to productivity and sustainability challenges, as well as land limitation issues for expansion.