PALMOILMAGAZINE, PONTIANAK – Indonesia, endowed with abundant natural resources, confronts the unfortunate reality that certain agricultural products, such as rice and beef, necessitate imports. In 2022, beef consumption in Indonesia soared to 700 thousand tons, yet the domestic production met only slightly more than 50% of the demand.
To bridge the gap, Indonesia has been importing beef primarily from Australia and India, with a per capita consumption of approximately 2.6 kg per year, significantly below the global average of 6.4 kg.
In light of this, addressing the beef needs in West Kalimantan has required seeking sources outside the province, notably from regions like Java. However, West Kalimantan possesses its own valuable natural resource—palm oil plantations—that could be strategically leveraged for cattle breeding.
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Over the past two years, a concerted effort has been underway to integrate palm oil and cattle farming in West Kalimantan. Duta Setiawan, an academic from the Faculty of Agriculture at Universitas Tanjungpura, revealed that this program has been actively pursued through collaboration with the Livestock and Plantation Agency of West Kalimantan Province. The initiative involves coordination across 13 clusters in six districts: Bengkayang, Landak, Sanggau, Sekadau, Sintang, and Ketapang.
“Palm oil – cow integrated program has many superiorities, such as, cheap grass, the cows would be more natural, weed spraying in palm oil plantations would be minimal,” he said, as Palmoilmagazine.com quoted from RRI PRO 1 Pontianak.
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He continued, the other advantgges from the program would be breeding rotation that could be adjusted to plantation agronomy activity. Besides, Duta said, palm oil – cow integrated program would advantage electric fencing to maintain palm oil seeds not to be damaged by cow.
“There are many things about cow breeding in palm oil plantations, such as, electric fencing. It is needed so that the cow would not eat immature palm oil or less than the five years old – trees,” he said.
The program would be the solution to fulfill beef needs locally and the strategy to escalate palm oil plantation productivity, optimize production cost in cow breeding in the province. (T2)
