Sometimes it can’t be denied that the government's self-sufficiency in rice is a policy based on the interests of political campaigns.

1. RICE’S SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN INDONESIA?
Sometimes it can’t be denied that the government's self-sufficiency in rice is a policy based on
the interests of political campaigns. Advertisements that have been raised about self-sufficiency
in rice were just to attract people to choose political party. Self-sufficiency in rice is also not
coped with good infrastructure and regulation, so it wasn’t really effective to carry out the
policy. Basically, Indonesia is could perform self-sufficiency in rice, but according from various
cases, the effectiveness of self-sufficiency in rice did nothing more than expenses incurred to
implement it. Thus, the results were always negative and not directly proportional to the initial
goal of rice self-sufficiency, as the igniter of economic growth and development for Indonesia.
Self-sufficiency in rice has always been the tool of every Indonesian government’s cabinet to
improve the financial income and the distribution of social welfare. In helping the distribution of
welfare, the government created an agency called Bulog (Badan Urusan Logistik/National
Logistics Agency) which focuses on rice as food commodities to enhance welfare. In further
examination, when implementing self-sufficiency in rice, the government created other
regulation, that increasing the price of rice in the local area in order to increase every local
farmer’s income, thus their productivity is increased. It was followed by restrictions on rice
imports, so that the major source was from local rice. However, according to research from
(Ascher 2012), this is actually a negative effect like a double-edged sword, because the
consumption for rice in rice-producing areas was the highest compared to the surrounding area
that doesn’t focus on the production of rice, so that when the price of rice is high enough to help
local farmers financially, it still doesn’t help local farmers to buy their own produced rice. In
additional, in the last five years, there have been more than 10 cases of corruption involving
Bulog and the production of rice, two of which have just occurred in 2016 in the district of
Magelang and Pamekasan, as published in Kompas (Taufiqurrohman & Assifa 2016; Fitriana &
Assifa 2016), the corruptor tend to use the poor-targeting rice (Beras Miskin/Raskin) and
subsidized rice to be sold at higher price and use that for themselves.
On the research by (Blunt et al. 2012), Indonesia is a country with fairly high level of corruption
due to the policy that helped the growth of governments corruption itself, these are affecting
human resource management of every Indonesian. On another occasion, (Natawidjaja & Rum
2012) said that in Indonesia the policy of self-sufficiency in rice where 100% of rice is being
produced on their own without importing rice from other countries is political requirement, when
in fact this policy is actually the most expensive and ineffective when compared with other
policies in rice production.
This certainly is a very big risk and ineffective, with the level of government corruption in the
self-sufficiency rice program as well as the uncertainty of economic patterns, we can only say
that this program is only a tool to attract every nationalist and independent extremist.

2. In fact, in the 21st century self-sufficiency in rice, which focuses on high production is not
effective because it is more precisely executed at the time of Adam Smith in the 19th century, an
‘absolute advantage’ if executed today is better suited if that country has a closed economy.
Creating a country by focusing on selecting of the lowest opportunity cost is a wise choice if you
want to build a sustainable economy.
REFERENSI
Ascher, W., 2012. Mineral wealth, development and social policy in Indonesia. Mineral rents
and the financing of social policy: Opportunities and challenges, pp.223–256.
Blunt, P., Turner, M. & Lindroth, H., 2012. Patronage, service delivery, and social justice in
Indonesia. International Journal of Public Administration, 35(3), pp.214–220.
Fitriana, I. & Assifa, F., 2016. 10 Pejabat Bulog Terlibat Kasus Penyimpangan Beras. Kompas
Gramedia Digital Group, p.1.
Natawidjaja, R.S. & Rum, I.A., 2012. Food Security Situation and Policy in Indonesia,
Taufiqurrohman & Assifa, F., 2016. Kejari Pamekasan Tahan Empat Tersangka Korupsi Bulog.
Kompas Gramedia Digital Group, p.1.