Food adequacy/food security is defined as physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious foods which meet the individual dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The definition showed the wide scope of food adequacy/food security. In other word, the discussion of food adequacy/food security covered many aspects in national, regional, household and individuals. There are three key dimensions to household food security; food availability, food access, and utilization of food by the body.
In general, we may say that factor is a contribution of natural and social phenomenon, while policy is a series of decision which is taken by the government and the business sector. The factors and the policy would interact to each other dynamically in order to decide the success of each subsystem on improving public nutritional status. In other words, the goal of all of these aforementioned efforts is to increase public health status which is finally improving the quality of Indonesian human resources.
Up to now, the Indonesian national food security is based on rice. In Indonesia, rice contributes 53% of total calorie being needed and 47% of the total protein need per day. The increment of the rice production itself is not as rapid as the increment of the population number, such as it is rice import are continuously increasing and Indonesia finally depends on rice import. The fact becoming highly ironic since Indonesia is very rich in varieties of agricultural food products. Indeed food diversification has to become one of the main strategies to reach food security in Indonesia.
Starting from the complexity of food security, the limitation of the problem and the work program becoming highly important. In one side, the limitation would make the work program at the SEAFAST Center becoming more focused, while in the other side, it could showed that linkage with other unit; both the Study Centers and the Department. It underline the important of SEAFAST Center with other institutions.
Technological Pull to Industrialized Food Adequacy/Food Security
In the perspective of economic development as a whole, some basic principles on developing food security are as followed:
- Poverty alleviation and jobless is the responsibility of the government. This fact should becoming the spirit of each government program included the development of food security.
- The best strategy to develop food security is through the agricultural and rural development that could also be the mode of poverty alleviation and unemployment eradication. On the other hand, food security development program has to link with the local economic development program.
- The development of food security must coherent with the axis of Indonesian economy circulation in domestic area. Such as it is, the focus of the activity is the economic activity which is designed to strengthen the purchasing ability of the people as the realization of public access on food.
The implementation of the three principles brings consequences that the strengthened of food security has to be coherent with economic and regional development In other words, a linkage within the whole food chain started from the agricultural production at the beginning, to the processing, distribution and consumption at the end. So, the formation of the linkage from the beginning to the end is a necessity in order to prosper of f the Indonesian people.
For the development of the linkage, we need technological inputs and policy recommendation that should be developed by the SEAFAST center. The developed technologies as well as policy recommendation are expected to raise technological pull to grow rural industry that supports food security which is based on the available resources.
Continuous technological innovation which is coherent with the market demand and the consumer needs is the success key of this approach. Only in this way that market demand would progress along with the producer progress and giving optimum benefit for the whole participant. The rapid growth of science and technology would give chances for the development of technology in term of more comprehensive food security. This effort is very important, especially when it is related with the effort to increase the usability value which is suitable with the development, necessity, problems and challenges which are more and more complex. The technological introduction in the development of value-added products is expected to broadened public choice on staple food. In the other hand, it is expected to grow economic activity. Specifically, the purpose could be specified in the following four development target as followed:
- To orient the accumulated capabilities in order to master a number of key technology that support food security based on indigenous resources.
- To improve the capacity of the local government on developing food security/agricultural policy which is based on its resources through synergistic partnership between SEAFAST Center and other research and development bodies, food industries and the local government.
- To increase the competency and the innovation ability of business units in formulating their strategic business in coherence with food security and agriculture.
- To increase the linkage between food commodity and other economic sectors through the formation of related industrial cluster.
