Jakarta (ANTARA) - Deputy Agriculture Minister Sudaryono emphasized the importance of maintaining balanced food prices to ensure that farmers and livestock breeders earn fair profits while consumers are not burdened with high costs for daily necessities.
“Farmers as producers, as well as livestock breeders, must prosper, while consumers should not be weighed down by soaring prices of basic goods. That is the essence,” Sudaryono said after opening the National Seminar of Agricultural Students, organized by the Indonesian Association of Agricultural Socio-Economics Student Organizations (Popmasepi), in Jakarta on Wednesday (Sept. 10).
He noted that food prices should ideally remain within a normal corridor, neither too high nor too low, with state intervention playing a key role in stabilizing the market to ensure shared welfare.
Sudaryono explained that the government purchasing price (HPP) for rice, corn, and other strategic commodities serves as an instrument to prevent farmers from incurring losses, while the highest retail price (HET) mechanism protects consumers.
“If prices fall too low, they should not stay low for long. Prices must remain within the corridor that has been set. For producers, there is what we call a flooring price, the HPP,” he said.
“For example, rice and corn both have benchmarks. We must safeguard the price of rice at the farm level and the price of corn to ensure farmers’ prosperity. On the other side, there is the ceiling price, or HET, which must also be protected,” he added.
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He further said that when prices surge, as with rice, the government intervenes through the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) with Stabilization of Food Supply and Prices (SPHP) rice. He underlined that food price stability reflects the principle of “live and let live,” ensuring that producers enjoy a decent livelihood while consumers can access food at prices affordable to their income levels.
According to him, maintaining balanced prices is not only about controlling inflation but also part of the state’s responsibility to promote the welfare of farmers, breeders, and society at large in a fair and just manner.
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With such a balance, Sudaryono believes Indonesia can strengthen food security while creating a healthy and equitable economic climate for all citizens.
Meanwhile, based on data from the National Food Agency’s Price Panel in Jakarta on Wednesday at 23:50 local time, consumer-level prices of food commodities such as premium rice stood at Rp16,031 per kilogram, down from Rp16,037, while medium rice fell to Rp13,905 per kilogram from Rp13,918.
