Jakarta. Poland is looking to export its apples to Indonesia by later this year as a means to boost bilateral trade figures with the Southeast Asian country that is currently running an ambitious free meal program.

Warsaw also intends to have Polish beef sold in Indonesian markets, according to its diplomat. However, the European country still has no intention of exporting live cattle -- something that the Indonesian government has been trying to secure to support President Prabowo Subianto’s signature free nutritious meal scheme.

“Indonesia already accepted [to import apples]. The first batch of Polish apples will arrive in the next few months,” Maciej Tumulec, the chargé d'affaires ad interim at the Polish Embassy to Indonesia, recently told the Jakarta Globe.

Tumulec, however, stopped short of revealing the expected Polish apple import volume that would get shipped to Indonesia later this year. Tumulec also called Polish apples to be “affordable and of good quality”. Apples are also not the only thing that is on Poland’s agri-food export wishlist to Indonesia.

“We do have the intention to have talks with the Indonesian government on beef and poultry imports. … It’s much more on beef though. [Because for live cattle], technically speaking, that would be very hard to do,” Tumulec said.

Government data shows the value of Indonesia’s trade with Poland hit $940.5 million in January-November 2024. Indonesia recorded a more favorable balance of trade with its exports to Poland reaching $678.3 million. This puts Poland in a deficit with Indonesia. Poland is one of the world’s largest apple producers, harvesting around 4 million tons annually. The Polish government named Poland as the sixth-largest beef producer in the European Union (EU) with its production hitting 559,000 tons in 2020.

At home, the Indonesian government has shown quite a strong appetite for live cattle imports as the country’s free school meal drive will soon enter its one-month mark. Indonesia kicked off 2025 by launching President Prabowo Subianto’s free meal program which has an overarching goal of improving children’s nutritional intake. The program seeks to feed nearly 83 million individuals, including schoolchildren and expectant mothers. The distributed meal typically includes milk.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Sudaryono revealed not long ago that Indonesia would import around 400,000 cattle this year. About half of them would be beef cattle, while 200,000 others are dairy cows. Local farmers would raise these cattle, thus potentially helping Indonesia meet the national beef and milk demand.

Despite the live cattle import plans, Prabowo wants to primarily source the ingredients used in his school meal program from domestic production. Fruits are typically served in the meals provided to the students. Bananas and watermelon slices are a common option. Indonesia is an exporter of those two fruits. The archipelagic country, however, buys hundreds of millions of kilograms worth of fruits each year.

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), Indonesia’s overall fruit imports hit nearly 690 million kilograms in 2023, about 458.3 million of which came from China. Indonesia also imported 238,433 tons of beef that year.

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