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Khazanah Nasional Berhad (Khazanah) and its partners, Think City and Khazanah Research Institute will be carrying out an on-the-ground survey of agriculture smallholders across Malaysia.

The initiative aims to survey 2,500 smallholders across Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak covering food crops, livestock, and aquaculture. The survey commenced in October 2022 and will be carried out until February 2023 in six regions across Peninsular and East Malaysia, with the aim to understand the industry and sectoral challenges faced by agriculture smallholders. Another objective of the survey is to enhance the understanding of the food ecosystem in Malaysia and generate tailored solutions for the industry. Through Dana Impak—Khazanah’s commitment to deliver socio-economic benefits to Malaysians and part of its strategy of Advancing Malaysia — it hopes to establish an effective coalition and harness local expertise for this survey to ensure comprehensiveness of this research project. The local partners in Sarawak and Sabah for this initiative include University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), O&B Research, Institute for Development Studies (Sabah) and Agridata. Other partners in Peninsular Malaysia include Penang Institute, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA).

The global agricultural sector is facing an unprecedented range of challenges, with issues such as soaring costs of imported inputs, labour shortages, climate change, new technology and innovation are impacting food security globally. Malaysia is no exception, with these issues impacting the country’s agricultural smallholders, who play a key role in the wider agricultural ecosystem. These smallholders, who often lack access to capital, are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global changes in the agricultural sector, and their resilience and ability to adapt is essential to the continued health of the Malaysian agricultural sector. To ensure that Malaysia’s agricultural smallholders are able to withstand these pressures, comprehensive research is needed which can provide them with the resources, knowledge and support necessary to become more resilient. Khazanah welcomes participation from stakeholders such as the government, private firms, regulators, academic institutions, think tanks, farmers associations and others, to contribute to the success of this survey. To obtain more information on this initiative, the public or stakeholders may do so via email to [email protected].