By: Nadia Chairunisa)*
The government continues to improve the management of food stock availability, including in the month of Ramadan. This management arrangement is carried out from upstream, namely the agricultural system, so that it is expected to be more optimal in maintaining food stability.
During the holy month of Ramadan and even until the upcoming Eid al-Fitr, the Government through the Ministry of Agriculture will continue to strive for stock control and food availability. Therefore, it is also said that if you really want the availability of food stocks to be guaranteed, there must be very adequate facilities and infrastructure. The Ministry of Agriculture will also continue to speed up the provision of infrastructure to answer these challenges.
It is undeniable that usually there will be food turmoil, especially if it is approaching the month of Ramadan until it reaches Eid. This was said by Faishal Rahimi, one of the economists from the Kuningan University, West Java. In fact, he said that the food turmoil has become an annual momentum that will always be present in Indonesia.
Faishal emphasized that precisely when we view that food turmoil is an annual momentum phenomenon that will inevitably occur, then there should be no party to panic when the food turmoil occurs. Because when someone panics, indirectly all planning and thinking maturity will even be disrupted. Then the thing that needs to be done by the Government is to take various anticipatory efforts.
Regarding efforts to anticipate the occurrence of food turmoil itself, in fact the Government itself has also taken various ways to increase agricultural productivity. Of course, through all levels of the Ministry of Agriculture (Kementan) the availability of food through upstream will continue to be a concern. Several steps have been taken to ensure the availability of seeds, fertilizers and one thing that is no less important is the guarantee of infrastructure or facilities and infrastructure.
Therefore, it is said that we should give great appreciation to the work and efforts of all levels of the Ministry of Agriculture, because they have done their best to help farmers and focus on dealing with food turmoil from upstream agriculture. Because it is true that when there is a problem regarding the threat of food turmoil like today, the thing that should be focused on is dealing with the upstream or early agricultural sources and can further increase productivity.
Regarding the infrastructure itself, actually when we talk about handling food turmoil from upstream with efforts to increase productivity, we don’t just stop at ensuring the quality and availability of seeds or fertilizers. Instead, what is no less important is to ensure that there is adequate infrastructure so that all plans can be properly actualized.
By paying attention to agricultural infrastructure or facilities and infrastructure, farmers will be greatly helped to further increase their productivity. When production can be continuously increased, in other words, agricultural products will be abundant, then the momentum of food turmoil will be easily resolved. Certainty related to the availability of food stocks will be guaranteed safely.
If the availability of food stocks can be ascertained to be safe through a good increase in production, then the next thing to consider is price control. Do not let it be when all stocks are guaranteed safe and there is no scarcity, but it turns out that the price on the market cannot be stable because there is a game from hoarders who deliberately withhold distribution.
So the agricultural mechanism efforts that have been intensified by the Ministry of Agriculture starting from the acceleration of improving the quality of soil processing, efficiency of production costs to increasing the quality of results are very important to continue. All these things are done by the Government in order to be able to help farmers while maintaining food stocks in the market.
)* The author is a contributor to the Press Circle and Cikini Students