Plenty idle land, yet we import RM50b food
Published on: Sunday, May 22, 2022
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This definition excludes land used for pasturing, for tree-farming (or “silviculture”), or for more durable agricultural products such as vineyards, orchards, and coffee and rubber plantations.
In turn, non-arable land can sometimes be made arable, for example by removing forests or tilling pasture land. Some land, such as mountains, tundra, or desert, is permanently non-arable.
In light of the increasing food prices faced by Malaysia, due to a combination of hoarding, the war between Russia and Ukraine, where Russia is ranked number 2 in terms of the size of the most number of able land after India, while Ukraine is number 10, any seismic events in this region are bound to impose an enormous pressures on the whole world.
On top of a pandemic that has gone endemic, where the endemicity.
60 percent of Malaysia’s food is imported. In 2020, the country imported RM55. 4 billion (US$12. 67 billion) of foodstuffs. When one factors in the fact that US$1 is now almost RM 4. 40, Malaysia will suffer an economic compression.
The country, for example, is dependent on imports for 88. 8 percent of mutton and 76. 4 percent of its beef, which are mostly buffalos imported from India. While Malaysia was once self-sufficient in poultry too.
Malaysia is now importing chicken to fill the void in the market due to the closure of many poultry farms. More imports imply more outflow of Ringgit Malaysia, causing it to weaken further, as indeed against all currencies especially US.
Most of the primary sector, led by Government Linked Companies (GLCs) and other politically connected companies have traditionally focused on the production of commodity crops rather than food. ”
According to the minister of agriculture and food industries Dr. Ronald Kiandee, the targeted source countries were Thailand, China, and Brazil, even though prices from these three countries were higher than sources from other countries, according to industry sources.
The three countries, however, have their own problems, leading to rising prices. Thailand is currently facing an African Swine Fever outbreak which has led to a sudden rise in the demand for chicken. China is currently a net importer. Brazil is also a questionable source, as meat and chicken exports have been banned from most Middle Eastern destinations due to questions over halal integrity.
Malaysia, has long been a victim of success in palm oil, crowding out food production. With the price of palm oil at more than US$6,653 per tonne, with Indonesia banning the export of its palm oil, in order to alleviate the inflationary effects that a domestic shortage of palm oil has caused the cost of vegetable to creep up, leading to various demonstrations, President Joko Widodo has had to to clamp down any further exports, even if Indonesia is losing US$3 billion a month in foreign revenues.
Even though the Malaysian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries (MAFI) has launched a number of capacity development programs like the Young Agro Preneur Program and My Future Agro, the image of farming as a vocation for locals is very low.
Particularly among Malays, farming is seen as being not glamorous. Most have been conditioned to aspire to work in the banking or government service. This is in great contrast to neighboring Thailand, where many smallholders are degree holders in agriculture and business, operating their farms as businesses.
Individual state governments are doing very little to allocate land to those in need of food production. Currently, 103,563 hectares of farmland are abandoned, making up 46,382 lots in 2019 that couldn’t be utilised due to ownership issues.
This doesn’t include idle or unused land in the hands of the government. Land tenure and rising rents in farming areas are major issues. Farmers across the country are being evicted by state land offices to make way for corporations, while vegetable cartels run protection rackets.
Politically connected companies are taking over the poultry industry, turning it into a cartel. The use of foreign labour, with millions of undocumented aliens, is a major scandal that appears to be controlled by a highly connected politician.
Ukraine, in peacetime, is responsible for 12pc of the world’s wheat.
The ingredients that are needed to create fertilisers are nitrate, potassium, and ironically, CO2 (Carbon Dioxides), of which the latter is needed for the packaging/packing of the fertilisers. The rise in the price of fertilisers is a global phenomenon. It hits the US just as badly as it affects the United Kingdom (UK) and the whole of Europe, even Africa.
As of May 6, the price of fertilisers per tonne in the UK rose from £650 to £ 1000. The U. S. , the whole of Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America are all witnessing the same rise in the cost of production. Although Asians don’t consume so much wheat, oatmeal, barleys, cereals and corn, these are the things which Malaysia does import in the form of animal feed.
Therefore Malaysian producers and consumers will also face imported agricultural and fertiliser inflation.
Some farmers in Europe may try to use more organic fertilisers by partnering with livestock producers (that produce animal feed) or those running anaerobic digesters, which make energy from organic matter, to try to offset the cost of high fertilisers, but whatever Europe does, even Africa, they are producing everything on the back of higher fertiliser and organic fertiliser costs, explained World Bank.
In Malaysia, with a weak national economy, that is also marked by an increasingly wild and turbulent weather, Malaysian famers may not have the risk appetite to plant more at all.
This is because the risk of being hit by severely bad weather is now higher than ever. One wild weather can wipe out the entire production.
Dr. Rais Hussin
- The views expressed here are the views of the writer Dr. Rais Hussin and do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Express.
- If you have something to share, write to us at: [email protected]
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