In short:
Dairy heifers have been exported from Sydney to Indonesia this week for the country’s free lunch program.
One of President Prabowo Subianto’s key policies is to provide free milk and lunches to all Indonesian school students.
What’s next?
Consolidated Pastoral Company says it will look to invest further if its trial with 50 heifers goes well.
Fifty dairy heifers have been flown from Sydney to Jakarta in what is understood to be the first Australian cattle exported to Indonesia specifically for the country’s free school lunch program.
The new president, Prabowo Subianto, has vowed to give free lunches and milk to all school students in an ambitious program set to cost billions of dollars.
The heifers exported this week were organised by the Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC), one of the biggest cattle companies in northern Australia, with feedlots in Indonesia.
CPC chief executive Troy Setter said the animals from New South Wales were flown to Jakarta, trucked through Java, then barged across to Sumatra, and were now in CPC’s feedlot at Lampung.
“They were unloaded last night and given their foot and mouth disease and lumpy skin disease vaccinations,” he said.
“They were checked by vets and are now happily on feed today.”
CPC chief executive Troy Setter speaks to NT Country Hour about the venture. (ABC Rural)
New era for Indonesia
Mr Setter said CPC and its JJAA Indonesian joint venture ran a small dairy in Indonesia 10 years ago.
“But we were probably a bit early in that journey and the demand for fresh milk [in Indonesia] just wasn’t there,” he said.
They currently have two feedlots in Sumatra, one in Lampung and another in Medan.
Mr Setter said Mr Prabowo was determined to eliminate childhood stunting and malnutrition in Indonesia and CPC wanted to be involved in that solution.
“So these heifers will be milked on site two to three times a day depending on how their production goes,” he said.
“We’re just working through whether we pasteurise or UHT that milk on site, or send it to what the government is calling ‘kitchens’, which are centralised processing hubs.”
Indonesia’s agriculture minister (middle) on site to welcome the arrival of Australian dairy cattle. (Supplied: CPC)
Mr Setter said a small pilot of the free school lunch program had already started in parts of Indonesia and it would increase in stages over the next two years to reach more than 85 million people.
“There will be some teething problems,” he said.
“But it’s absolutely commendable for what the Indonesian president is trying to achieve to ensure malnutrition and childhood stunting rates are eliminated.”
The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture has stated that it plans to import about two million beef and dairy cattle over five years from various countries, including Australia, NZ and Brazil.
It expects the lunch program, which also includes free meals for expectant mothers, will require 4.1 million tonnes of milk.
Indonesia’s Director General of Livestock and Animal Health, Agung Suganda, said the arrival of the dairy cattle would be a blueprint for how the private sector could help increase Indonesia’s dairy herd.
“Hopefully in addition to providing calves, these [Australian dairy cattle] will also start producing milk for local needs by the middle of next year,” he said.
Indonesia’s largest dairy company watching Prabowo’s lunch plan. (NT Country Hour)
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