I'll Say It Again, We Have a Wheat Problem

Indonesia is wheat-dependent. So if we kick every wheat out of this country, how are we going to eat our Indomie?

Feb 19, 2024

Halo!

Let me start today’s newsletter by saying hi to some new readers here. Thanks for joining the cult. You’re in for a ride and by ride I mean some exciting essays and stories on food, sustainability, and culture! So put your seatbelt on.

The past weeks have been crazy for me. Not only that I hold my first Community Hangout last week (story coming soon!), but Indonesia also just had its biggest presidential election, which was… eventful… to say the least. It took a lot of physical and mental energy to go through the last 14 days, but I’m in my acceptance phase now so let’s jump into today’s read.

I’ll be discussing on:

🍞 Brief history of how wheat entered Indonesia and how it is now a staple in Indonesia’s diet.

🤯 The crazy fact that despite our increasing instant noodle obsession and wheat consumption, we still import 100% of our wheat from outside the country.

🌏 A condition review on Indonesia’s readiness to go wheat-free. How far are we from being self-sufficient with wheat alternatives such as cassava, corn, and indigenous sorghum?

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This is what I meant when I said: “Send noods”. (Photo by: Chalafabia Haris)

Here is what I usually eat in a day:

Breakfast:
Two slices of lightly toasted bread, jam, a cup of jasmine black tea

Lunch:
Steamed white rice, egg-based dish (e.g. telur balado, opor telur, telur dadar), clear soup / sauteed veggies, gorengan, iced long black/iced matcha latte

Dinner:
Any kind of noodle. Be it ramen, mie goreng, mie aceh, or instant noodle.

What do these have in common? They all use wheat flour in it.

Wheat is still an indispensable part of my daily meal and that made me concerned. I am genuinely concerned about the fact that 100% of the wheat we consume here in Indonesia is imported. I mean, I know that wheat doesn’t grow here. But somehow, it just doesn’t sink into my head that of all the wheat, all 10 billion tonnes of the wheat we imported in 2023 has to be brought… well… from overseas. That shit’s scary. To be relying on food from outside of the country and to have little to no control over how much we could get and at what price we’re getting them, is scary.

Remember those articles in 2022 saying that instant noodle prices were going to increase by 300%? That was such a monumental issue for us Indonesians, especially considering how staple instant noodles are. The idea of paying three times the normal price for noodles is just absurd. But what's even more absurd is that there wasn't much we could do about it. These rumours appeared a few months after Russia started invading Ukraine, which resulted in the halt of a wheat supply, and Indonesia, not having a stock of its own wheat was only left with the option of waiting, standing silently like that standing emoji guy.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Today, we still pay Rp3,000 for a pack of Indomie. However, this situation exactly illustrates how heavily dependent we are on things that are out of our hands.

Let’s take a step back. How did we end up in this situation?

To answer this, we need to trace how wheat entered Indonesia. One of the theories that I found through my silly little desktop search is that it came with the Dutch when they colonised Indonesia for spices in the early 18th Century, which was then more popularised during the Portuguese colonisation era. No wonder, the word ‘terigu’ for wheat in Bahasa Indonesia is a loanword from the Portuguese, ‘trigo’.

Quoting from Historia (2020), several efforts have been made to grow wheat here in Indonesia during the 18th century, but since we are a warm and tropical country, many problems like pests and crop failure are prone to happen. It was not until the 1960s that wheat officially entered Indonesia through an American food aid, which paved the way for the beginning of our wheat import as it is also deemed to be more practical.

Isn’t it weird how the Europeans colonised us for spices, made us grow wheat, and now they can’t eat any of them?

Today, wheat is an integral part of many Indonesian foods, and don’t get me wrong, I love gluten! I am one of the 99% of people in the world who don’t have celiac and can eat wheat without getting tummy hurty. Most Indonesians would probably be on my side too. We love gluten. We eat noodles and gorengan on a daily basis. So it’s unsurprising to see a 13% increase from 2022 to 2023 in wheat’s import volume, something that is driven by our noodle consumption.

OK, I get it, we love noods that much. But of all types of noodles, why do we still rely on wheat noodles when other crops like corn, cassava, and the indigenous sorghum can also be made into noodles?

Answering this question can give us an understanding of why wheat is still the most popular ingredient when it comes to making our staple food. Let’s consider all the stages that our food went through, from farmers, to producers, to us, consumers.

👨‍🌾 Farmers: Indonesia’s cassava production in the last five year has been fluctuating but showing a decreasing trend, while corn production went down by 10% in 2023 when compared to 2022. This made it difficult for Indonesia to be self-sufficient, resulting in continued reliance on imports. In the late 2020s, the government launched a nationwide program to build large-scale plantations to grow staple crops like cassava, rice, and corn called the food estate. Yet, this remained controversial as the practice involved deforestation and taking away the land of the indigenous Dayak people without consent.

👩‍💼 Producers: I wouldn’t worry much about this part because when it comes to product innovation, everyone here in Indonesia are so creative! Cassava chips are something that is well known even when my parents were my age, and today, there are hundreds of variations of cassava products - from noodle (again), tiwul (rice shaped cassava to substitute rice), cookies, and snacks. Plus, the government have also been highly endorsing the use of sorghum in small to medium enterprises. Sorghum have been made into flour, sorghum rice, sugar, and noodle (sorry) - some of them were even exported by Ministry of Trade (2022).

🙆‍♂️ Consumers: As a consumer, one thing that icks me of these wheat alternatives products are that their price points are still far from competitive. The price of 1kg wheat flour, cassava flour, and sorghum flour are Rp12,000, Rp25,000, and Rp60,000 respectively. That made cassava flour twice as expensive and sorghum flour five times more expensive as wheat flour. Moreover, sorghum’s slight bitter taste, sandy texture, and the fact that many Indonesian stil have a very limited knowledge on how to use them also contribute to it’s low popularity.

It is clear that Indonesia still has a long way to go to be fully sans wheat. Despite Indonesia being the perfect place to abundantly grow crops like cassava, corn, and sorghum, future investment and development in its farming and production infrastructure still needed to be done. The rise of wheat alternative products can already be seen today, but with many Indonesians still being unfamiliar with their taste and usage would only mean that greater education is still necessary.

For my Indonesian readers, you can contribute to this issue by noticing many non-wheat dishes and alternatives out there, such as Jajan Pasar. And if you need some product recommendations, check out these businesses below including mine!

🌱 Tamanan: Tamanan is a plant-based food business from Jakarta. They specialise in making tempe protein balls, brownies, banana breads, and seasonal tarts all made with local flours such as cassava, corn, and sorghum. They are now open for bulk orders, events, and workshops! (Click here)
🍞 Seroja: Seroja Bake is a bakery from Bandung. Their mission is to modernise the use of local Indonesian flours like cassava, sticky rice, and ganyong by turning them into savoury dishes, desserts, and pastries. (Click here)
🍜 Javara: Javara is a company offering a wide range of natural, organic, and artisanal food products. They’re one of the first businesses to offer an Indonesian gluten-free premix flour and have a lot of wheat-free ready-to-cook products for both individual and commercial use. (Click here)

What do you think about going wheat-free? Let me know in the comment section below!