Jakarta. The US has agreed to help Indonesia produce higher-quality milk for Indonesian children as President Prabowo Subianto prepares to launch his flagship school-feeding program. 

The Prabowo government will begin distributing free lunches to Indonesian children -- starting from preschoolers to high school students -- in January. The program seeks to lower the national stunting rate, thus meals are expected to be nutrient-rich and will include milk as its source of calcium. But Indonesia’s annual milk production stands at around 1 million tons, far behind the overall national demand of 4.7 million tons each year, according to the Agricultural Ministry. .Indonesia also has to make sure that the milk that it serves to the children is of high quality. 

The US Dairy Export Council (USDEC) launched Thursday a training program for Indonesian small and medium-scale dairy farmers in partnership with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture (NMDA) and New Mexico State University. Indonesian dairy milk producers Global Dairy Alami, Cimory, and Ultrajaya are also taking part in this project. 

The program will equip the farmers with the know-hows and tools to enhance their milk quality and production. Farmers will also learn the best practices on managing their farm and animal health. The program will include online tutorials which the USDEC claimed would be accessible to the farmers at all times. 

“It will help the smallholder dairy farmers meet the required standards for the milk to be included in [Prabowo’s free meal] program,” US Ambassador to Indonesia Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir said. 

Lisa Ahramjian, the embassy’s agricultural counselor, told the press later that day that Washington was open to providing technical assistance to help Prabowo execute the free meal program. The US has been feeding eligible low-cost or free meals as part of a school-feeding program which has been around since 1946. The US is willing to share its decades-long experience with Indonesia.

“If the Prabowo administration is interested in working with us and seeing how we do it in the US, we can look at [it]. But it would be helpful for us [to know] what support [Indonesia] would like to have from the technical side,” Ahramjian said. 

The free meal plan has become a major talking point in Prabowo’s ongoing multi-nation trip. Earlier this month, Prabowo met with his American counterpart Joe Biden at the White House for some bilateral talks. According to a joint statement, Biden had “expressed his support” for this program.

The joint statement, however, did not touch on dairy cow imports despite Jakarta’s plans to purchase American cattle. Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman revealed not long ago that Indonesia would import 1 million dairy cows over the next five years, some of these cattle will come from Australia and the US, among others.