| dc.description.abstract | Indonesia as an agricultural country, in fact, still needs to import food, especially rice. Food self-sufficiency program, which focus on increasing production of rice, is now reached leveling off stage. When realized the importance of production and consumption balance, the government issued fooddiversification policy over 45 years ago. However, it is not successful as expected. For some reasons, several government policies or programs were not actually supporting diversification policy, such as rice for government employees, ceiling price, and rice for the poor (raskin) policy. Raskin policy, a transfer of government revenue indirectly to poor households, is a good effort to overcome social problem due to increase of oil price. Yet, this program is getting people to consume more rice. Competition among staple-foods will be unbalance if the government sees rice as national food and forgets the potential local staple food. Papua, as province with big demand of rice, have not implement real policy in food diversification. Local staple foods potencies, such as sweet potatoes and sago, are getting less consumed by the local people to replace rice. They consume more rice as they become more prosper. The main staple food commodities locally Papuan people are sweet potatoes and sago growing that the higher the class the higher the consumption of rice is due to the superiority of local staple food. Food consumption data in real terms demonstrate the ability of households in food access and describe the level of household in food sufficiency. The increasing rate of food consumption also implicitly reflects the level of income or purchasing power in food. Therefore, food diversification policy should be adjusted to local wisdom. Then, Papuan should be directed to consume sweet potato and sago. This study examines whether the food for the poor program should be continued, removed, or replaced with local staple food according to standard calorie need. The research focus on Papua region and use data from the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas) 2008–2010 panel Papua. Other data sources derived from the Food Security Agency (BKP) Ministry of Agriculture and the Central Statistics Agency (BPS). The one percent change in rice price affects significantly the price of all commodities and the proportion of outlay commodity groups analysed. This generally means that rice is still the main staple food. The changing price of some commodities affect to other, some commodities don’t affect at all. The price has not only negative effect on the demand itself, but also has positive or negative to other commodities demand. The price fluctuation causes inflation and people’s ability of purchasing food. The influence of revenue expenditure proportion to all commodities is significant, except to sweet potatoes and fruit. The coefficient of income to most of the food commodity groups is positive. It means that the increase proportion of household income will be followed by a significant increase in demand rate for food commodity groups. According to research of three alternative, simulations which give effect to the purpose of diversification of food and energy needs in maintaining the recommended limit is 3rd simulation. It suggests to replaced raskin policy to accommodate the decline rice consumption and increase the local staple food. Rice replaced by sweet potato or sago adjusted as potential local staple food. The increase of rice price can be substitute by the decrease of local food price (sweet potato or sago). The impact of simulation 3 is the reduce of rice consumption by 21.47%, but replaced with the increase of sweet potatoes or sago consumption (by 23.19% and 25.01%). Therefore, the raskin policy should be immediately replaced with other staple food policy based on local staple foods. For Papua region, sago-based district can change rice with sago. Sweet potato-based district can change rice with sweet potato. The implementation in changing rice to local staple food can be done by giving coupons that can only be trade with local staple food, not rice, with subsidized price. This is suitable according to the government policy in Presidential Regulation No. 22 in 2009 and Agriculture Minister Regulation No. 43 in 2009. The main concern of those two regulations is the staple food diversification policy (in reducing rice consumption and increasing local staple food consumption). | en |
