Indonesia en route to popularize tropical fruit

Thousands of farmers under East Kalimantan farmers group Gapoktan find it unfortunate that people outside Indonesia are missing out on their home-grown fresh and juicy mini papayas, bananas and dragon fruits.

So far, most of their fresh fruit products are only consumed by locals buying from nearby markets due to a lack of infrastructure, making it expensive to deliver fruit across the country, let alone export them.

Indonesian fruit exporter EK Prima Ekspor Indonesia, a subsidiary of the United Arab Emirates’ retail giant LuLu Group International, knows firsthand how selling prices at the consumer level end up depending more on transportation costs than on production costs.

“Transportation — from farmers to warehouses to airports and finally to the destination country — is very expensive. If our unique fruit doesn’t appeal to consumers, we could lose out to other countries, especially if they can produce similar fruit for cheaper prices,” said Irawan Santoso, head of the fruit and vegetable division of EK Prima.

Indonesia also has mangosteens, rambutans, snake fruits, jackfruits, soursops, breadfruits, guavas and starfruits that grow in the tropical country, but they are not frequently consumed globally or even domestically.

The government aims to boost tropical fruit production by expanding land for fruit plantations while also improving infrastructure and transportation systems to decrease high distribution costs, as part of efforts to be the biggest tropical fruit producer in Southeast Asia by 2025 and in the world by 2045.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo acknowledges that this is no easy task, especially with farmers’ preferences to use land for high-yielding commodities, such as palm oil, rather than fruit, which takes time to return on investment. Poor infrastructure has also driven up logistics costs for years.

“If we can have 14 million hectares of oil palm plantations, we should also be able to have that much land for fruit,” Jokowi said during the opening ceremony of the four-day Fruit Indonesia Festival 2016 in the Jakarta Convention Center parking lot on Thursday. The President handed out various tropical fruits to children to remind people of the “love local fruit” movement.

“If you see a lack of supporting infrastructure that could hamper distribution, please let us know,” he told the audience consisting of scientists, fruit planters as well as local and international trade delegates.

To expand plantations, provincial administrations have been instructed to provide local farmers with 5 to 50 ha of land for fruit planting per business unit, as part of the bigger goal to provide 400,000 ha of land in Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Sumatra.

The program started with 100,000 ha in cooperation with state-owned companies. State plantation firms under PTPN also asked to start cultivating their under-utilized land for fruit production.

“The state firms have been very enthusiastic to give sections of land for fruit plantations. They are used to producing palm oil, rubber, tea and other commodities but not fruit. So, a new management specializing in horticulture needs to be formed,” Bogor Agriculture Institute (IPB) rector Herry Suhardiyanto said.

IPB is now studying a possibility to form another state company to develop horticulture based on the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry’s request.

The business community is hopeful that the vision of becoming the world’s largest tropical fruit producer will be honored over time.

“Let us not change the policy and vision every time we change presidents,” said Karen Tambayong, head of horticulture development with the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.