The once-empty barns of the Laras Ati milk cooperative are filled with the recent arrival of more than 200 pregnant spotted Holstein-Friesian cows from Australia, under Indonesia's ambitious plan to ratchet up milk production.
The centerpiece of a program to provide free meals to 83 million children and expectant mothers, the plan calls for importing a million dairy cows over five years — at a cost of nearly $3 billion — to lift the size of the country's dairy herd more than fourfold from 220,000 now.
With limited fiscal space, Jakarta is pressing private companies to fund the imports — an unorthodox approach causing concern among the business community in Southeast Asia's largest economy, according to scheme participants and documents.
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