Toward Achieving Self-Sufficiency Livestock

Abstract

Unlike in Australia and New Zealand where huge land area is designated for their livestock industry to meet the global demand for meat and milk, Indonesia with 14,752 islands registered at United Nation in 2003 and 260 million people is far more complicated to achieve her self-sufficiency policy targeted by 2021. The breeding of the icon Bali cattle project in 2013 at Nusa Penida Island was the right step toward the goal to minimize dependency on imported beef from Australia and frozen buffalo meet from India especially during festivals. Because of the complicated nature of the whole business all the interested parties must understand the government policy and committed so that everybody including the customer will enjoy the benefit. Our study at the cattle ranch of Sembung village Mengwi District in Badung regency central of Bali is an example of the problem for the assessment and improvement actions needed in near future. The Badung regency is 82,000km2 with population of 501,126 people based on 2014 population statistic. In this regency there are six districts namely South Kota, Kota, Northern Muta, Mangwi, Abia semal and Petang having Bali cow population of 8182, 370, 1074,3692,4018 and 5516 heads respectively. Our analysis is based on the survey at Sembung village Mengwi during January to March 2017 covers several aspects including land area, people, knowledge, financial, market chains, information accessibility and management. Overall, cattle farming in this district is not their main job but rather as sidejob activity to have an additional income whenever they really need it. Despite all the consideration the majority Hindu Balinese people take less beef. Therefore the approach is to effectively contributing to the national self-sufficiency. The natural disaster due to volcanic activity should also be included in the model not only for management but also to control the middle man activity to take advantage of the situation by buying cattle at cheap price almost half of the normal price as witnessed during the recent Mount Agung eruption in 25th Nov 2017.