Indonesia plans to ease dairy cow importation to support President Prabowo Subianto’s free school meal program, ensuring sufficient, high-quality milk for schoolchildren. The government aims to import 1 million dairy cows between 2025-2029 to meet rising milk demands.
Indonesia is making moves to simplify the process of importing dairy cows, a key step to ensuring the success of President Prabowo Subianto’s free school meal initiative. Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman announced that the government is working to streamline the importation of dairy cows from countries like Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, the United States, and Mexico, with the goal of improving the quality of milk produced locally.
Starting in January 2025, Indonesia will roll out its ambitious free meal program, aimed at providing nutritious meals, including milk, to school-age children across the country. The government is focused on ensuring a steady supply of food and milk to meet the needs of this large-scale initiative. To meet the growing demand, Indonesia is looking to import approximately 1 million dairy cows over the next five years (2025-2029).
Minister Sulaiman emphasized that the government would work to make it easier for local dairy farmers to bring in these cows, with the goal of producing higher-quality milk for the school meal program.
“We will not make it difficult for dairy farmers to import cows. This is all to produce higher quality milk.”
Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman.
As part of the plan, the Ministry of Agriculture is discussing potential funding schemes with regional banks and cooperatives to support the import process. The government has set a target for national fresh milk demand to reach 8.5 million tons by 2029. Of this, 4.9 million tons will be used to meet regular milk consumption, while the remaining 3.6 million tons will supply the free meal program.
The free school meal initiative, which is a key promise made by President Prabowo during the election, aims to combat the national issue of stunting by providing children with balanced meals. Preliminary trials of the program have already been conducted in some schools, with the meals typically consisting of rice, chicken, vegetables, fruit, and milk.
With these efforts, the Indonesian government is positioning itself to not only meet the nutritional needs of its schoolchildren but also support local dairy farming in the process.
