It is fortunate that your Workshop is being held in Indonesia at this time when our government has accorded top priority to agricultural development and is giving special attention to efforts for the development of a more dependable status of food security for its population of 140 million, and improved nutritional levels in general and increased calorie and protein intake for our most vulnerable groups of citizens in particular.
Our Third Five Year Development Plan (Repelita III) has been formulated recently and our agricultural development goals are focussed on the following objectives which have real implications for our fisheries industry:
the increase of production and supply of food in quantity as well as quality to strengthen our national resilience in food;
the improvement in income of rural families, small farmers and fishermen in the spirit of providing a more equitable distribution of the results of development as expressed in increased quantity and quality of product and therefore increased national wealth;
the generation and expansion of gainful employment opportunities in the rural areas;
increased foreign currency earnings and savings through increased export of agricultural commodities, including fish and fish products;
the stimulation of the development of agriculturally related industries through interacting linkages by providing domestic industries with agricultural raw material and intensifying the utilization of domestic industrial products such as fertilizers, tools and machines; and
a better evaluation and utilization of the existing agricultural production resources and the ecosystem to enhance the production of food and fiber while protecting the environment.
Many, if not all, of the themes and issues listed in the provisional agenda of this Fifth Session of the Working Party on Aquaculture and Environment now convening in Jakarta from 22–26 January are pertinent to our agricultural development goals and we shall appreciate your collective thinking and resulting recommendations on these issues. As a background for your deliberations, and with the indulgence of my colleague, the Director-General of Fisheries, whose office provided the statistics, I would take this opportunity to present some information on the current status of Indonesia's fisheries resources and production.
While fish production in Indonesia has shown progress over the last ten years, it is still inadequate for our domestic needs and does not begin to approach the optimal utilization of our vast aquatic resources. Our fish production in 1978 was 1.655 million metric tons up from 1.228 million metric tons in 1970 for an increase of about 36 percent over that nine year period. This is, in my opinion, a commendable achievement. The performance of the several sectors was uneven however. Production from the marine sector increased by 39 percent, that from our fish culture area by 31 percent, while production from open water decreased by 11 percent and continues on a downward trend. We can and must do better!
Indonesia's resources for fish production are vast and, indeed, we are one of the few, if not the only country to refer to our homeland as Tanah Air Kita, Our Land and Water. In addition to our marine resources, we record 13.7 million ha of open water and 266 000 ha of fishponds within our boundaries. Our current estimates of the rate of resource utilization compared to the maximum sustainable yield is at approximately the 30 percent level for the marine and open water sectors, and only 12 percent for our fish culture sector. These figures adequately enforce my previous statement that our production does not approach the optimal utilization of our vast aquatic resources.
While our fishery yields are currently low and our resources underutilized, we recognize the great potential for improvement which we can and must harvest through the application of present knowledge and technology with its adaptation to our local conditions as well as with the generation of new technology through research. As our resources are great, so are our needs. Our current estimate of fish consumption is only 10.8 kg/caput/year compared to an assumed need of 29.5 kg/caput/year, or in other words, we are currently providing only about 37 percent of our assumed need. In addition, Indonesia's fish farmers are in the lowest income brackets. They are currently encumbered with a low productivity and low profitability farming system. This situation is contrary to our national development goals and we are determined to address ourselves to it!
On the other hand, our export of fishery products has increased from 22 000 to 64 000 tons from 1970 to 1978 with the dollar value increasing about 27-fold. While this is not a large export volume on the global scale, these figures again illustrate the tremendous potential which lies before us. And I do not believe Indonesia is atypical of the other countries of the Indo-Pacific region. I believe we all face these and other similar, common problems and potentials.
So it is for these, among other reasons, that I was pleased to notice from the report of the Fourth Session of the IPFC Working Party on Aquaculture and Environment that you are really interested in efforts to solve these problems and to formulate and organize action programmes. I am also pleased to learn from the report that the IPFC is planning to reactivate the Cooperative Programme of Research on Aquaculture. I would now like to give you some information on Indonesia's agricultural research structure.
In 1974, the Government of Indonesia made an important decision on the organizational framework of agricultural research. Through the issuance of a Presidential Decree, all research institutions within the Ministry of Agriculture were brought under a single national agricultural research organization: the Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (AARD). This was an important step towards:
the integration of all agricultural research activities into a development-oriented, national agricultural research programme;
the consolidation of a scientific manpower development scheme; and
a more balanced allocation of research funds.
In our present situation, the project discussed and proposed by the Fourth Session of the Working Party, i.e., the project on integrated fish-livestock-crop farming can now be formulated and organized at the national level in a more comprehensive way with direct support from research institutes and stations within our national system which are dealing with livestock and crops - both food and industrial crops. In addition, the Centre for Agro-Economic Research within the National System can assist in research on the socio-economic aspects of aquaculture, on its profitability and its contribution to the income and employment opportunities of rural families. I hope that when the Working Party discusses problems on integrated fish farming systems that you will refer to the integrated fish farming activities in Indonesia as well as to those in China.
For the last three years, fishery research in Indonesia has enjoyed a substantial increase in budget allocation which has been reflected in improved and expanded working facilities. I am referring to those fisheries research stations which are either under construction or have been recently completed at Palembang, South Sumatera; at Serang, West Java; at Ancol, Jakarta; at Maros, South Sulawesi and those which are still in the preparatory stages at Gondol, Bali and at Ambon in the Moluccas, besides the three existing research institutes of marine and inland fisheries and fish technology.
We hope that through productive consultations with scientists and technicians from IPFC member countries we will be successful in formulating aquaculture research formats specific to our local conditions and needs. And I think it will not be difficult to organize, in cooperation with the Directorate General of Fisheries, in-country workshops, training and demonstrations of integrated fish-livestock-crop production systems for small farmers as recommended by the Fourth Session of the Working Party on Aquaculture and Environment in Manila two years ago. In this way, I believe we in Indonesia will be making a contribution to the translation of your deliberations and recommendations into action programmes.
I wish you all a successful and productive meeting and a pleasant stay in Indonesia. Thank you.
