Other News
November 11, 2009 10:44 AM
Sabah Moving Towards Food Production
By Emin Madi
KOTA KINABALU, Nov 11 (Bernama) -- When Datuk Yahya Hussin became the Sabah Minister for Agriculture and Food Industry, one of the changes that he made was to create a 'mini market' within the ministry's premises.
For visitors to the minister's office at Wisma Pertanian here, they would not escape noticing attractive packages of agro-based food products being prominently displayed on both sides of the entrance.
When queried whether this was part of the 'window dressing', the minister laughed before explaining that the idea was to create public awareness on the state government's determination in making agriculture an economically-viable sector.
Yahya said the message was that Sabah's agricultural sector had reached the commercial-viable stage.
"We want the local and foreign investors to know that Sabah is seriously focusing on the efforts on producing value-added agro-based products," he said.
VAST POTENTIAL IN AGRICULTURE
Since taking over the stewardship of the ministry 20 months ago, Yahya has been earnest towards moves to fully exploit Sabah's vast potentials in the agriculture sector.
He said eventhough the government was fully committed to the development undertakings, specific attention was given to the policy to enhance food production.
Under this policy, rice production was singled out as the key factor towards establishing food security for Sabah, which still imported some 70 per cent of its consumption for rice.
"We cannot allow this over-dependence on food import, particularly rice, to continue. Imagine what would happen to Sabah if something happens to our main rice exporters such as Thailand and Vietnam.
"Therefore, for strategic reasons, it's extremely important for Sabah to really venture into a big scale commercial paddy cultivation," he said while acknowledging that the state was still lagging in terms of modern infrastructure like irrigation and drainage system.
NEW AREAS FOR PADDY CULTIVATION
Yahya said while there were moves to open up new areas for paddy cultivation, the government will also enhance the infrastructural needs for the existing 35,500 hectares of paddy land throughout the state.
He said only about 10,400 hectares of this hectarage produced 5.0-10 tonnes of paddy per hectare due to good irrigation and drainage system.
The rest was somewhat less productive due to problems associated with the water irrigation.
Yahya also said the ministry had embarked on several approaches to increase rice production including encouraging paddy farmers to cultivate new variety of high yield paddy.
"The Agriculture Department has already produced 19 varieties of high yield paddy suitable for the local environment," he said, adding that the paddy strains included the IR73, MR84, MR159, TQR1, IR72 and TQR2 varieties.
PLOUGHING SUBSIDY
"The government has also increased the ploughing subsidy from RM100 to RM200 per acre to encourage farmers to plant paddy. On top of that the subsidy is now not confined to only five acres as compared to the practice before," he said.
The permanent centres for food production (TPKM), introduced during the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) also complemented the food production ehnancement policy.
Yahya said the TPKM in Tawau (one of the five areas earmarked for the project) was ready and the centre was in the midst of recruiting contract farmers for the project.
The TPKM concept adopts centralised farming activities where participants are allocated a plot of land within the centre on contractual basis.
On livestock breeding, Yahya said following the enactment of the Control of Livestock Activities (Pig) Rules) 2008 in February this year, all pig farms in the state are required to be licensed by 2011.
"The rules was to ensure that pig farming in the state will not cause environmental hazards and farms found operating illegally will be closed," he said.
On dairy farming, Yahya hoped the higher fresh dairy milk price of RM2.50 per litre (from RM1.50) effective July 2008 will make the dairy farming industry more competitive.
NO MORE PRACTICAL
The minister also said the 'top down planning' approach in carrying out development projects was no more practical.
"I want all my officers to work hands-on and identify the real needs of the people. These inputs will be used as the basis for planning development programmes so as to ensure that its implementation are really based on needs and priority.
"Secondly, I want all departments and agencies under the ministry to be more focused on the (development) needs of the target group, including identifying the critical programmes for the people," he said.
Yahya said before, there was this typical attitude where policy-makers thought that they knew better what the people needed and implemented development projects without consulting the people in that particular area.
"The government has now decided that all development programmes must not only reach the target group but more importantly the projects were indeed needed by the people in that particular area," he said.
Yahya hopes to see Sabah become an international player in food production, even having to promote one or two agro-based food product.
"I call on the key players in the agriculture sector find ways how to achieve this objective. Sabah has agriculture produce that I unique in their own right like the Tenom pomelo and Tambunan ginger", he added.
-- BERNAMA
We provide
(subscription-based)
news coverage in our Newswire service.
