Indonesia turns to sorghum to expand food sources

INDONESIA is reintroducing the farming of sorghum, a popular staple food in the old days, as it seeks to expand its staple food sources beyond rice and wheat.

The rice-eating country is aiming to have 30,000ha of sorghum plantations by end-2023, and 40,000ha by 2024, from less than 10,000ha today.

The increased sorghum acreage will still be dwarfed by the 7.5 million ha of rice fields across the world’s largest archipelagic nation, underscoring the importance of rice to the Indonesians.

Still, there are compelling reasons for the government to promote the growing and consumption of sorghum in the country as it looks for alternatives to rice and wheat to feed its burgeoning population that now stands at 270 million.

First off, sorghum has several advantages over rice.

Unlike rice, which needs a lot of water, sorghum is able to thrive in dry conditions.

It has more nutritional value, containing not only carbohydrates, but also protein, minerals, potassium, calcium and phosphorus. Rice has only carbohydrates and some protein and is high in glucose.

Sorghum is also not new to Indonesians and should be easily accepted as a staple, although only 5% of the adult population know about sorghum, let alone consume it, according to emergent sorghum businessman Novan Satrianto.

The cereal has been known and possibly grown and consumed in Indonesia since ancient times. It is depicted on relics of the world’s largest Buddhist temple Borobudur in Central Java, whose construction started in AD750.

Sorghum was widely cultivated in the 1970s and consumed in East Nusa Tenggara, which receives low rainfall, as well as some other provinces. But it was overtaken by rice in over the next three decades as the Suharto administration promoted the crop as a staple food.

The Indonesian government is now deploying free sorghum seeds and fertilisers to targeted provinces – East Nusa Tenggara, Central Sulawesi, West Kalimantan, West Java, Banten and East Java, said Dr Ismail Wahab, the Agriculture Ministry’s director for cereal.

“We continue to do required work and will further expand the coverage,” he told The Straits Times, noting that new sorghum plantations will not affect existing food crops and that they could also be on marginalised land.

But most importantly, when ground into flour, sorghum can be a reliable substitute for wheat flour. — The Straits Times/ANN