A Breaktrough in Sticky Rice Farming

The importing of sticky rice up to 200 tons per year is a concern of Dr. Ir. Sunawan M.P., an agriculture  doctor who just hold his doctoral degree from the Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Islam Malang (Unisma). It is time for our farmers to switch to sticky rice, which offers  morepromisingprofit, especially byemploying the farming method he has invented, which makes the farming process more efficient and the harvest double This new method is elaborated in his dissertation entitled “Increasing solar energy efficiency through improved sticky rice cultivation technology” he found several factors that make sticky rice farming more efficient.  “Right now there have been seeds that have  shorter growing period called early maturing, which equals to the use of solar energy efficiency techniques with 100 days planting period,” he said. In the past, sticky  rice planting period can be very long which can be up to 5 months if you do not use these seeds, but now it’s different. Beside the seeds that have short planting period, the demand for sticky rice is also very high. So far, the government has fulfilled the needs for sticky rice by importing from Thailand and Vietnam. “Indonesia’s production is only 50-80 tons and the government still needs to import 100-200 thousand tons.Today farmers do not want to plant sticky rice even though the profits are twice higher than non-sticky rice. The profit can  be 20-25 thousand rupiahs per kilogram, “he added. Through this research, he hopes the community can begin to switch to growing sticky  rice rather than non-stikcy rice. In addition, the government must also take part in educating the public about the benefits of growing sticky rice.