Bogor Promotes Jack Bean as Substitute for Soybean

TheIndonesia.id - Bogor is prepared to promote jack bean as a soybean alternative by advancing the downstream sector and processing industry, city mayor Bima Arya has said.

Arya said focusing on expanding and enhancing the downstream sector will be one of the key steps in popularizing and promoting the commodity, which is abundantly available in Indonesia.

“The city of Bogor will focus on the downstream,” he said on Friday, April 1, as reported by Antara.

He said Bogor is prepared to lead the promotion of jack bean-based products which has been encouraged by the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs, as mandated by President Joko Widodo.

According to Arya, tempeh makers in the city have been solely relying on soybean as main ingredient to make the world-famous product, but it can be challenging as supply really depends on import that’s prone to fluctuating price.

During an event in Bogor on Friday, Arya and Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki tried a number of products made from jack bean. And according to them, the taste of jack bean-based tempeh wasn’t different from the one made from soybean.

“It tastes similar. if I hadn’t been told [previously], I wouldn’t have known that it was jack bean,” Arya admitted.

The next step, he said, will be to find processing technology that can further improve the taste and quality of jack bean products.

Finding alternatives to soybean has been quite a pressing matter in Indonesia, especially after the commodity’s price surged drastically earlier this year, which led to tempeh and tofu scarcity in a number of regions.

Agrotechnology expert from Sebelas Maret University Mercy Bientri Yunindanova explained that sourcing for soybean substitutes might be inevitable as the current soybean farming is still done relatively poorly for Indonesia to fulfill its domestic demand.

“We have to find alternatives [because] cultivation cannot 100 percent fulfill domestic soybean demand. [Indonesia] needs a more integrated, uniformed, and well-managed farming system,” Yunindanova said on March 1.

Food diversification, therefore, is a solution to find other sources of protein, and one of the strategies is by using alternative beans as tempeh’s main ingredient. And Indonesia’s rich biodiversity will provide the country with an abundance of choices.

“Its introduction to the public hasn’t been massive, and it must be done gradually to change the mindset that tofu and tempeh can only be soybean-based. Other foods can also provide protein, and food diversification is definitely a better option,” she explained.