Jakarta, Sept. 11 -- Deputy Agriculture Minister Sudaryono emphasized the importance of maintaining balanced food prices to ensure that farmers and livestock breeders earn fair profits while consumers are not burdened with high costs for daily necessities.

"Farmers as producers, as well as livestock breeders, must prosper, while consumers should not be weighed down by soaring prices of basic goods. That is the essence," Sudaryono said after opening the National Seminar of Agricultural Students, organized by the Indonesian Association of Agricultural Socio-Economics Student Organizations (Popmasepi), in Jakarta on Wednesday (Sept. 10).

He noted that food prices should ideally remain within a normal corridor, neither too high nor too low,...