After a hard morning's toil, most Indonesians like to refuel with a lunch that includes a generous helping of rice. But if it is a Tuesday, they will be out of luck at stalls in a suburb of Jakarta after the local mayor took the novel step of declaring it a "no rice day".
The move, part of a wider push to cut consumption as a step towards self-sufficiency in rice, has not gone down well with street vendor Toni, who said his customers have little appetite for alternatives to the staple grain. "Even in the holy Koran there is no ban on consuming rice," said Toni, as flies buzzed around diners and the empty places at his stall in the Depok area of the capital.
Indonesia, self-sufficient in rice in the 1980s before farmland was used to build housing for a booming population, will in coming weeks decide on the volume of rice imports needed to ensure supplies in 2012. The world's fourth most populous nation is looking to avoid the kind of rising prices seen early last year, when food security shot to the top of the priority list for global policymakers.
Despite a push to expand paddy fields as well as curb consumption, the government has forecast that it may be forced to import up to two million tonnes, as it did last year, from Southeast Asian exporters Thailand and Vietnam. "Indonesia will not become another North Korea and starve its own people," said Andy Aaronson, a rice specialist for the US government. "However, their deficit is projected to widen over time."
But diluting the population's dependence on the grain is likely to be a stiff challenge. The government has promoting eating other home-grown staples such as cassava, through street posters, news conferences and television adverts at dinner time. Indonesia's rice consumption is still rising, and at more than 139 kilograms per capita per year is among the highest in the world, the International Rice Research Institute says.