Determining Food Price Stabilization Priorities Across Indonesian Provinces Using K-Means Based on Strategic Food Price Disparity and Volatility

Abstract

For the Indonesian government, food security is one of its priorities, and price stability across provinces serves as one measure of progress. To help identify where stabilization efforts are most needed, we used K-Means clustering to group 37 provinces based on the National Food Agency's publicly available monthly consumer prices for 17 strategic food items from October 2024 to January 2026. Seven features described each province, namely price level relative to the national median and coefficient of variation for three food groups, and the share of months above reference prices. A stability rule (at least two provinces and a mean bootstrap Jaccard of at least 0.75 in every cluster) selected four clusters, which a consumer price pressure index then ordered into tiers P1 (highest) to P4. P1 (Central and South Papua, provisional) and P2 (five other Maluku–Papua provinces) had prices 13–50% above the median and exceeded reference prices in 87% of months. P4 (12 provinces, including Java except Jakarta) had the lowest mean prices, the most volatile chili prices, and about 80% of national paddy output. In the agency's distribution program, 94% of inter-provincial volume came from P4, but the shipments did not favor higher-priority tiers, and P1 received only one shipment in 2024–2026. Because the data are open, the segments can be updated with each release and used to match stabilization instruments to each province.