Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Surabaya, East Java – Thousands of Indonesian salt farmers, mostly in East Java, will suffer economically as traditional salt production may decline by 70 percent this year. The expected decline in production is a result of weather anomalies caused by La Nina and an influx of imported salt from Australia.

The East Java branch of the Salt Farmers Association's (HMPG) chairman, Mohammad Hasan, said that based on Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) data, it was expected to continue raining during the dry season until the end of September.

"If the forecast is correct, salt farmers in Indonesia will have only two to three months for production, namely September, October and November. It will be quite difficult because this will result in only about 30 percent of total 2015 national salt production," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Hasan further said that if it continued to rain until November, salt farmers would suffer harvest failures because the rainy season was expected to start in December.

In 2015, traditional local salt production was 2.7 million tons, which did not include salt produced by state-owned salt company PT Garam. National salt demand amounted to 3.3 million tons in 2015, which comprised 1.5 million tons of salt for consumption and the remaining 1.8 million tons for industrial purposes.

Despite the production decrease, Hasan said, the price of traditional salt had been on a decline. The influx of imported salt aggravated the situation, he added. Around 270,000 tons of salt from Australia are expected to arrive in Indonesia this month. (ebf)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/08/08/e-java-salt-farmers-to-see-70-drop-in-production.html