Cassava in Indonesia: its Economic Role and Use as Food

Abstract

Cassava, Manihot esculenta crantz, is not native to Southeast Asia. It was imported from the New World as were sweet potatoes, white potatoes, corn or maize, peanuts and tomatoes. The exact timing of this importation is not clear. One author suggested that cassava came to Java in Indonesia as early as the seventeenth century from the Moluccas1 while another author implied that cassava was introduced into Java in the later eighteenth century.2 At about the same time that cassava was arriving in Indonesia it also reached other parts of Asia. In 1786 cassava was reported in Ceylon after arriving via Mauritius; in 1794 it was planted in the East India Company's new botanic garden in Calcutta. Sir Stamford Raffles does not mention cassava in his History of Java,1 but he does mention other New World imports such as corn and sweet potatoes. While the use and spread of cassava has been fairly recent in many of the countries of Southeast Asia, it is now grown in all of them. However, it is a major agricultural product only in Thailand and Indonesia. Table 1 gives comparative details of cassava, rice, and corn for various Southeast Asian countries. Thailand's production of cassava is almost entirely exported to several of the European Common Market countries to be used as an animal feed; some quantities are also turned into starch. In Indonesia, however, cassava is a basic staple for the population. This paper examines the use of cassava as human food in Indonesia, how it is grown and processed, its nutritional aspects, the economics of the substitution between cassava and the other staples, and the possibilities of increasing demand and consumption of cassava in the future.