8 - Flour Power

Summary

In the film The Year of Living Dangerously, a main character, Billy, falls to his death after unfurling from a high-rise window a banner declaring: “Sukarno, Feed Your People”. The message was similarly applicable to his successor Suharto, who in 1966 was in the process of easing the country's first president out of office. The new leader had yet to consolidate his power, but he was well aware that he badly needed to keep people fed if he was to be accepted. The country was seriously short of rice, the staple and the fulcrum of Indonesian life. The grain was the lifeblood of Indonesians, and at the time, soldiers and civil servants received part of their salary in rice. Inadequate food supplies were fuelling runaway inflation, which by some calculations topped 500 per cent. Supplying food to help prop the nascent anti-communist Suharto regime became an important part of a massive effort by Western nations, led by the United States. Suharto demanded huge aid, sending emissaries to Washington. In September 1966, after meeting Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik, U.S. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey wrote President Lyndon Johnson:

Indonesia requires large amounts of rice and is attempting to obtain rice not only from the U.S. but also from Burma, Thailand and some from Taiwan. They need much more from the U.S., however, than they now have reason to believe they will receive … I suggested increased uses of wheat and bulgar (cracked wheat), but was told that there was a consumer resistance due to a lack of understanding and custom. Mr Malik agreed that it would be in the long-term interest of Indonesia for wheat and bulgar to be increasingly introduced… Mr Malik emphasized that his country's urgent rice and cotton needs were also essential to feed and clothe the troops. With the ending of confrontation on the Malaysian border and to keep the military from becoming restless, it was necessary to keep the large numbers of troops in Indonesia satisfied and occupied.

Washington donated some rice but Suharto kept pushing for more, given Indonesians’ attachment to the grain. The United States, however, wanted to promote wheat, of which it had stockpiles. Over time, Suharto signalled that wheat would be okay if there really couldn't be more rice.