Food

These Indonesian food memories can be wrapped in leaves

One night, not long after I arrived in Sydney in 2007, my mum told me her friend had given us some lontong for dinner. I jumped at the chance of eating something familiar from home: a compressed roll of rice wrapped in banana leaves, boiled, and cut up into small compact cakes.

Seaweed farmers’ flexibility makes Indonesia a major player in global markets, but there is more work to be done

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of the gel-containing seaweeds known as hydrocolloid seaweeds. Unlike food seaweeds, produced mainly in China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan, hydrocolloid seaweeds are used to extract gels used in a range of applications, including as a thickener in food processing and as a biomaterial for pharmaceutical applications.

Indonesia’s poorest are starving

A report titled, “Policies to Support Investment Requirements of Indonesia’s Food and Agriculture During 2020-2045” found that 22 million people in Indonesia suffered from chronic hunger between the years 2016 and 2018.

Sign up to our twice-weekly Media Update