Agricom.id, JAKARTA – Minister of Agriculture, Syahrul Yasin Limpo told that his side is focusing to prepare 11 daily needs. This is for the people to get the food certainty in the pandemic of corona virus (Covid-19), and to anticipate that there would be expensive daily needs heading to Idul Fitri.

Chili is one of 11 daily needs and it is over supply. Most of the chili production centers have been harvesting since April and would be the same until July 2020.

The redundant harvests, as a matter of fact, are not equal to the market demands because of the implementation of big scale social distancing or penerapan sosial berskala besar (PSBB) in some regions to sell. As the result, there are abundant stocks and make it cheaper and the farmers have no capital to plant it again.

General Director of Horticulture, Ministry of Agriculture, Prihasto Setyanto said that this is out of prediction. In the previous, his side arranged the planting system and gave early warning system (EWS) which is sent to every region in every single month.

“The goal is to prevent the over-supply. But what happens now is out of prediction,” he said, as in the official written statement, Saturday (9/5) to Agricom.id.

But General Directorate of Horticulture, Ministry of Agriculture has done to minimize the cheap chili, such as, by postponing the selling system. It has been socialized to the agriculture agency and the champion farmers in the production centers since the early of April.

“General Directorate of Horticulture, Ministry of Agriculture facilitated to rent the cool storage in some regions that could be used to keep their harvest,” the man who is familiarly called as Anton, said.

“It could be sold when it gets more expensive. We also facilitate the distribution costs from the surplus regions to the minus ones,” he continued.

Anton also told that the farmers should be smarter and should not be stiff to cultivate. For instance, they could plant intercrops.

“So they should not plant chili only but intercrops (other commodities) so that when chili gets cheaper, there would be income by selling other commodity which may give profits,” he said.

Not only that, to support the prevention program of Covid-19 to the farmers, his side has allocated the budget to facilitate the helps of horticulture seeds, such as, chili, vegetables, and fruits.

Based on the EWS in August to October 2020, the production, namely chili would be surplus nationally but the numbers would not be many, only about 5 thousand to 9 thousand tons in September - October. The production is the impact of the dry season and the possibility that many farmers may not plant it as the nowadays price.

“The government noticed this. Within the seed helps, we do hope that the farmers keep planting in May - June so that the chili production could fulfill the market demands,” he said. (A2)