Raising the Issue of Food Sovereignty, PDIP Chairman Megawati Opens the IV National Working Meeting at JIEXPO Kemayoran
Jakarta – The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) held the IV PDIP National Working Meeting (Rakernas) at JI-Expo Kemayoran, Central Jakarta. The event, which brought together all cadres, was held for three days from 29 September to 1 October 2023. PDIP Chairman Megawati Soekarnoputri opened the event with a speech raising the issue of food sovereignty.
The National Working Meeting is also a forum for discussing various political issues and party agendas, as well as formulating strategies for the future. In her speech, Megawati conveyed that food is the breath of life of the nation.
“In the last few weeks, Indonesia has been faced with the problem of increasing prices of rice and other basic necessities. Because we are very dependent on consuming rice, especially with the highest per capita consumption level of 96 kg in the world. “Meanwhile, the actual healthy consumption of rice is 60 kg per person per year,” said Megawati.
High consumption of rice has implications for diseases including diabetes or diabetes. In turn, low food diversification will be a burden on our nation. This will give rise to new problems, especially in the health sector, which could become an additional burden on the state budget.
On the same occasion, President Jokowi also stated that the issue of food sovereignty raised by PDIP is very relevant to the situation we are facing, which is not something easy, but really something that is not easy to resolve, because it involves the threat of climate change. It is real and we really feel it in our daily lives today.
“The increase in the earth’s temperature, drought everywhere, long dry seasons, causing crop failure, crop failure, and super El-Nino in our country are also affecting the people’s food supply. “Added secondly, it is related to world geopolitics which also influences food supplies,” explained President Jokowi.
One of them is the War in Ukraine. It turns out that we imported 11 million tons of wheat and almost 30 percent came from Ukraine and Russia because they are the world’s largest wheat producers.
We know that our population is already 278 million, the world also has more than 8 billion people and will continue to grow, in 2030 it will reach 310 million, because our population growth is 1.25 percent per year. This means that food is the key, as stated by Bung Karno, food is the lifeblood of a nation, that is absolutely true. He has seen what we are experiencing now
Therefore, continued President Jokowi, in the next ten or five years we must have a tactical vision, not a vision and mission that is too good to be seen in the air, but a tactical vision, we must have a detailed work plan.
