President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) visited Orange Village, Liang Melas Datas, Karo Regency, North Sumatra, last Friday, February 4, 2022. During this visit, the President said that orange farming in Karo has enormous potential, especially in meeting national needs and exports. However, he sees that there is still a need for improvement, especially in terms of packaging quality. Regarding this matter, Minister of Agriculture Syahrul Yasin Limpo (Mentan SYL) continues to encourage the development of regional-based horticultural commodities, where oranges are one of the mainstay commodities. This step was taken to increase the export volume by three times. Moreover, said the Minister of Agriculture, oranges are an Indonesian commodity that has a comparative advantage and high export demand and continuity so its development needs to be increased to 1 million superior orange seeds. "The demand for kaffir lime exports is quite large. President Jokowi's order is not only to increase production to meet his own needs but also to double exports," said Minister of Agriculture Syl in a press release, Monday (7/2/2022).
On the other hand, the Minister of Agriculture SYL encouraged the Ministry of Agriculture to take aggressive steps in spurring exports of Indonesian agricultural products over the next three years. One of them is by accelerating the One Day With Indonesian Coffee Fruits Floricultures (Odicoff) program. According to him, the program is believed to be able to attract world markets for Indonesian agricultural products. "Odicoff is a business forum that is not complicated, not too formal, and doesn't really need anything. But there are food testing and product displays. So like that, there is a talk show and a short video is played about Indonesian agricultural products," said Minister of Agriculture SYL. Meanwhile, the Head of the Agricultural Research and Development Agency of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fadjry Djufry, said that his party is ready to develop superior orange cultivation with certain types that have high production and export potential. Moreover, in the last 5 years, Balitbangtan has distributed 21.4 million disease-free orange seedlings throughout Indonesia. "This year, the Minister of Agriculture chose several types of superior oranges to be developed as many as 1 million seeds. Orange is a commodity that needs to be developed because it is a mainstay of exports," said Fadjry.
