Cassava in Indonesia: its Economic Role and Use as Food
Cassava, Manihot esculenta crantz, is not native to Southeast Asia. It was imported from the New World as were sweet potatoes, white potatoes, corn or maize, peanuts and tomatoes. The exact timing of this importation is not clear. One author suggested that cassava came to Java in Indonesia as early as the seventeenth century from the Moluccas1 while another author implied that cassava was introduced into Java in the later eighteenth century.2 At about the same time that cassava was arriving in Indonesia it also reached other parts of Asia. In 1786 cassava was reported in Ceylon after arriving via Mauritius; in 1794 it was planted in the East India Company's new botanic garden in Calcutta. Sir Stamford Raffles does not mention cassava in his History of Java,1 but he does mention other New World imports such as corn and sweet potatoes. While the use and spread of cassava has been fairly recent in many of the countries of Southeast Asia, it is now grown in all of them. However, it is a major agricultural product only in Thailand and Indonesia. Table 1 gives comparative details of cassava, rice, and corn for various Southeast Asian countries. Thailand's production of cassava is almost entirely exported to several of the European Common Market countries to be used as an animal feed; some quantities are also turned into starch. In Indonesia, however, cassava is a basic staple for the population. This paper examines the use of cassava as human food in Indonesia, how it is grown and processed, its nutritional aspects, the economics of the substitution between cassava and the other staples, and the possibilities of increasing demand and consumption of cassava in the future.
Some ecological considerations of nutrition problems on Java.
Indonesia is the world's fifth largest country. In 1968, the Workshop on Food convened by the Indonesian National Institute of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States drew attention to the critical nature of the country's food situation. Within Indonesia, Java occupies an unique position, comprising approximately seven percent of the country's total land area and containing almost two‐thirds of its population. Food production dominates the agricultural economy of Java. The main foods are rice, corn, cassava, sweet potatoes, peanuts and soybeans. Fish is the main source of animal protein and supplies are low. In this paper, available data on nutrition conditions are reviewed and an analysis is presented of food production. A number of factors influencing the food and nutrition problems are discussed, including demographic, economic, cultural and institutional factors. An understanding of the ecology of the food and nutrition problems is needed to facilitate the establishment of p...
Avocado Flowering 1
The avocado (Persea americana Mill.) has increased in importance over the years in many countries around the world. The United States, Mexico and Brazil lead in world commercial production, while Israel, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Spain, Cyprus, Canary Islands, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Greece, and the Caribbean area are actively increasing commercial production (B.O. Bergh, personal communication; Gustafson 1976). The history of the avocado has been detailed by Gustafson (1973, 1975,1976) and others (Bergh 1975b, Knight 1980; Popenoe 1924; Ruehle 1958; Schroeder 1958; Williams 1976). Several reviews have been published on various aspects of the avocado, including its botany (Knight 1980; Purseglove 1968; Williams 1976), breeding (Bergh 1975b), horticulture (Hodgson 1930b; Ruehle 1958; Ryerson et al. 1924), cultivars (Campbell and Malo 1976), and pollination (Gustafson and Bergh 1966). A recent collection of papers discussing the horticultural aspects of avocado production is found in Sauls et al. (1976).