SCHOOL FOR ANIMAL BREEDING TO BE EXPANDED

People’s School of Animal Farming founded by Muladno Basar when he was the Dean of the IPB Faculty of IPB be expended and be developed. With the promotion of Muladno as Director General of Animal Farming and Animal Health, Ministry of Agriculture, the concept which was only applied in small scale would be developed into broader scale.

“Self sufficiency in meat would be hard to attain unless we make a breakthrough. Perhaps it might take 30 years to be self sufficient, by all the breakthrough, self sufficiency could be attained sooner,” he said.

The school of animal farming was established because the position of Australian cattle breeders who had been supplier of meat to Indonesia was not in parallel. In Australia one farmer owned thousands of cows, highly educated and were very market orientated.

In Indonesia one cattle breeder owned 1 or 2 cows, lucky enough if he had 5 cows. The average education level was Elemetary School of Junior High School. Livestock was not the main source of income; they were farmers with limited land for planting food horticulture and gardening. Cows were just some sort of asset only sold when vast amount of cash needed.

Under such circumstances cattle farmers needed a helping hand in order to compete against Australian cattle breeders. The Faculty of animal Farming of IPB mobilized animal farming experts an under the guidance of animal farming experts established School of Animal Farming. In the school there were at least 1,000 cows including 200 male cattles.

Today there were at least 14 schools of people’s animal farming spread out in all of Indonesia. The students were taught all about animal farming. The period of education was 3 years or extendable to 4 years. In the fifth year they were put to work.

Cattle breeders were bound in one business unit. They appointed 9 persons as member of inspection Board. School graduates were placed by IPB as manager of the business unit. These 8 people was expected to transform animal farmers.

 
The problem faced afield was farmers selling female mother cows when they needed money. To solve this problem IPB gathered investors and persuaded them not sell their cow to the butcher. The cow would be bought by investors at the price of Rp.390,000 for 52 months. In 4 years the cow would regenerated and give to one calve.

Many personal investors participated in this program. All the schools that totaled in number was established by collaboration with the Provincial Government. It was the Provincial Government who financed school establishment by among others providing the cash for comparative study with other countries, attening conventions etc.

As initial step the Directorate General of Animal Health had allocated fund for paying Manager’s salary. PT Bedikari had been enlisted as avails so the People’s School of Farmers could get bank’s credit.

In the future financing of SPR would be located from APBN Budget together with the Provincial Government. The universities being involved were also numnerous. Thereby it was expected there would be more animal farmers who were business oriented to speed up self supporting in meat.

The APBN-P 2015 was designed to supported increase of national meat through acceleration of cow’s birth, procurement of mother cow and prevention of cutting productive female cows. To procure mother cows the Government planned to import 27,650 cows plus 3,150 local cows.

Mother cows of palm plantations imported 15,000 cows to be distributed to palm farmers groups included in plasma or independent palm farmers. As with independent farmer’s. as with independent farmer’s group, Scientists building villages and contest winners group was given imported mother cows 11,325 plus 600 local cows, i.e. from Bali and Madura and also 1,000 diary cows.

For developing Regional technical Execution units, 1,200 local mother cows and 200 local cows were provided. For field cows and ex-mining locations 950 local cows were allocated while for universities 125 imported mother cows were provided.

Procurement of calves at the Central Technical Execution Units was 300 Balinese cows, the Regional Technical Execution Units 250 Balinese cows including development of Greenfield animal feed 1.0000 Balinese cows and PO.

Saving of productive female cows in accordance with mandate of Law Number 41 year 2004 on livestock farm was responsibility of the Provincial Government. Therefore Mayor/Regent were asked to make a Law which prohibited cutting of productive female cows.

The Director General of PKH themselves had collaborated with the Police to overcome he problem in West Java, East Java, Lampung, South Sumatra, Bali, NTT and NTB covering 27 regents and cities. At the early stage only publicizing was exercised but no sanction being put. (SS)

Business News - June 19, 2015