Indonesia's big push for increased food production drives livestock health

Indonesia's big push to significantly increase its domestic food production is helping to build awareness of the importance of higher level livestock management throughout the archipelago. Under the game changing plan developed by president-elect Prabowo Subianto, the Indonesian Government is on track to provide free lunches and milk to Indonesian school students. The bold A$11 billion program aimed at helping to meet the nutritional needs of emerging generations within Indonesia is resulting in increasing reliance on animals to provide protein and milk alongside more efficient crops and food processing and distribution systems. The government-driven push has sparked considerable interest in how Indonesia's livestock can be more productively managed in often challenging tropical environment. Indonesia, which has a land mass slightly bigger than Queensland but spread across 17,000 islands, has an estimated 18.6 million cattle including about 600,000 dairy cows. There are also more ...