Prospects of Cassava Development in Indonesia in Supporting Global Food Availability in Future

Abstract

Climate change is a major factor endangering sustainable food production. Various efforts have been made to prevent potential food shortages in future. Meanwhile, access to adequate food is an important part of human rights. In Indonesia, the opportunity for cassava development is still widely open and has potential to provide for the world's needs in future. Cassava is well-known by farmers in Indonesia and can be easily cultivated in all areas of Indonesia, even though the soil fertility is low. The current problems are that cassava is still considered as an inferior commodity and is only used for direct consumption. Indonesia is able to meet the world's cassava needs only by utilizing 54% of the total available land, which is suitable for planting cas-sava. Cassava utilization is actually large and has potential as raw material for many strategic industries. The map of cassava development in Indonesia is in the phase of growth and product expansion (diversification). Thus, the efforts in preparing cas-sava in Indonesia to meet the world's needs in future, including (1) increasing cassava productivity, (2) improving cassava added value by-product diversification, and (3) enhancing cassava bio-economy by implementing a bio-industry system integrating cassava and livestock farming.