A New Stunning Commodity Called Chili

Although I'm not a chili lover due to my sensitive stomach to hot food, but people generally take it as a special dish. For those chili freaks their regular meals, meat balls, noodles, steamed food, porridge, soup, curry, fried rice and many other savory foods which are too many to mention one by one here, are not really enjoyable without chili, either it is as raw chilly or made as chili sauce. They may even lose their appetite to enjoy those dishes without chili with them. So don't underestimate chili, no wonder there is a jargon in the country saying: "Chili,It's powerful although it is tiny ".

Chili suddenly becomes a prima donna nowadays. It suddenly becomes a stunning commodity when its price soars to a level we've never imagined before, surpassing the prices of high grades apples, grapes, pears, kiwis which are mostly imported, or the king of fruit Durian.

The price of chili (small chili) has reached 100,000 to 120,000 rupiah (around 11 to 13 US$) per kilo, which used to be 20,000 to 40,000 per kilo. This crazy price also attracts new and old farmers to try their luck to become new chili farmers. The euphoria also comes to every house to spare some part of their yards to be planted with chili, or at least, they grow it on potted soil if their houses don't have yards

Chili's rising price has brought some extraordinary consequences. Chili farmers have to increase their alertness and hire security guards to surveillance their chili fields, this sounds exaggerating but it's really necessary since chili alluring price has increased looting lately.

As a big consumption commodity, chili is included in calculation of the country's economic indicators and another effect of chili's increasing price that it contributes to the swelling January 2011's inflation rate.

All walks of people from government high rank officials, economist, chili merchants, housewives, restaurant owners, street vendors complain and try give their theories what has caused chilly so expensive. Theories contributed by those various heads finally share the same end that bad weather in the country is considered the main cause of chili's wild price.

Yes, like some other parts of the world do, Indonesia suffers prolonged weather anomaly these days. Dry season which should have taken place from April until October 2010 was replaced by heavy, windy rainy days. So we experienced rainy season all year long last year. Chili is susceptible to excessive water. Too intensive rainy water has caused spoilage in many areas known as chili main producers , which makes the markets in short of chili supplies. To make the condition poorer, transportation is also hampered by this severe weather problem, another factor which worsens chili supplies.

This prolonged weather irregularity has disrupted many sectors, not only agricultural sectors. Fisheries, shipping, transportation, tourism also get the impacts.

The occurrence of severe weather disruptions and weather anomaly have been more intensive recently. These conditions also happen in other parts of the world with floods, snow storms, and land slides have struck some countries.

I don't mean to overstate but behind this unusual condition I, deep in heart, wish the earth still sufficiently has its carrying capacity to let us live and get protection, and hope that the impacts of global warming are not coming too soon.