THE aggressive stance shown by the Indonesian government toward cattle importers, lot feeders and traders last week looks set to continue as the country moves closer in its seeming intent to embrace the vexed issue of bovine meat imports from India.
At a meeting with cabinet members in the presidential office last Tuesday, President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo demanded that the perennial issue of hikes in staple food prices ahead of Ramadan and the subsequent Idul Fitri holiday be solved, according to an article in the Jakarta Post.
Jokowi was reported as saying that he expected the price of meat to be maintained at around Rp 80,000/kg (AU$8/kg).
That is in stark contrast to Jakarta wet market rates of around Rp 115,000/kg (AU$11.50/kg) reported last month.
On Friday last week the same paper ran a very supportive article on Indian beef imports claiming an end to price fluctuations and greater certainty for meat prices, new economic opportunities for India and Indonesia and an indirect impact on tourism and the creative industry due to the Indian bovine meat being 60pc cheaper than recent import prices.
Supposedly the Indonesian agriculture minister is “hopeful that the final regulation on the change will come out before Ramadan allowing Indian meat to officially enter the market before then”.
Oddly, there has been nothing in the mainstream media of any counter campaign being mounted by the small farmers who will lose out as a result of Indian beef imports.
Authoritative commentator on S E Asian beef industry, Dr Ross Ainsworth said in the March edition of his Beef Industry Report that history shows very clearly that when other S E Asian countries commenced imports of cheap Indian beef their domestic breeding herds declined sharply due to poor profitability.
Dr Ainsworth predicts that the moment Indian buffalo beef arrives legally in Indonesia the entire national herd will be worth about one third of its previous price.
If he is right then there should be an enormous groundswell of protest from the estimated 5 million traditional small-scale cattle farmers with their average herd size of three head that represent Indonesia’s domestic cattle industry.
It also calls into question the stated intention of Indonesia to bring in 50,000 breeder cattle from Australia this year for wide distribution around the archipelago.
That announcement followed the third meeting of the Indonesia Australia Partnership on Food Security in the Red Meat and Cattle Sector held in August last year which allocated a sizeable portion of its $60m budget toward the promotion of sustainable commercial-scale beef cattle breeding in Indonesia.
As Dr Ainsworth points out, it is hard to see how this would make any sense in the context of opening up the Indonesian market to Indian buffalo beef.
Another first for SEALS
VETERAN live export operator John Kaus is about to establish another major market milestone when his company SEALS (South East Asian Livestock Services) ships the first consignment of cattle to Cambodia’s first purpose built abattoir to process Australian cattle later this month.
In October and November 2012, SEALS was the first exporter to venture into the Vietnam market under the ESCAS regime with two consignments of 1400 head, the only cattle shipped that year. That market has since grown to an estimated 350,000 head in 2015.
The 1650 head shipment to Cambodia will consist of feeder and slaughter-ready cattle and will sail from Darwin.
The 11,000 square-metre processing facility in Preah Sihanouk province was developed by local meat distributor SLN Meat Supply Pty Ltd.
SLN’s managing director Hor Sim Leang was reported in the Phnom Penh Post saying initial production would be solely for the domestic market.
Production is scheduled to begin in June at around 200 head per day which if achieved, should allow small shipments on a regular basis.
