Policy roundtable discussion

The results from the key activities of the project were shared with key policy makers from the Indonesian Government at the IndoDairy Policy Roundtable Discussion held recently.

Key Indonesian government officials attended the policy roundtable from the Ministry of Coordinating Economic Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Industry, Ministry of Trade, Directorate General of Livestock and Animal Health, Ministry of Cooperatives and small to medium enterprises and key members of the IndoDairy project team.

During the roundtable there was a lot of useful discussion representing different areas of government and policy making. Take home messages from the participants of the policy roundtable discussion:

• Developing policies that will support the development of innovative business models is essential. Business models need to be inclusive of smallholder farmers, sustainable and commercially viable.
• Dairy cooperatives play a key role in the Indonesian dairy sector due to the small production scales of farmers in West Java. Additionally, they play an important the role as a catalyst of community development.
• Increasing the number of dairy cows per farm is one way to increase the domestic production and decreasing the reliance on imported milk products (e.g. powdered milk). This can be achieved by increasing importation of dairy cattle.
• There is an opportunity to increase the milk price received by farmers through introduction and monitoring of standards around milk quality. Currently, there are no standards around how milk products are labelled, so ‘fresh’ milk may contain a proportion of powdered products. By introducing policies on labelling of that recognise ‘fresh’ milk as a being 100% from liquid milk (i.e. not reconstituted milk) will give a more competitive edge to smallholders in Indonesia.
• Other key priorities for policy development is improving animal welfare standards through provision of good quality feeds and better farm management practices.
• Research and development needs to focus on encouraging use of by-products of the food industry as a source of feed for dairy cattle. Feeds, such as tofu waste, can be a cheaper alternative to concentrates and are high in important nutrients (e.g. protein). These can be used to balance dairy cattle diets, especially when concentrate costs are high or the availability is low.

At the Policy Roundtable, the IndoDairy Smallholder Household Survey (ISHS) Factsheets were launched. The set of factsheets provide a complete overview of the information gained from the analysis of data collected by the project.