Growing food in Malaysia is stunted by greedy moronic politicians

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Previously, we were the largest exporters of rubber, palm oil, rice and major exporters of pepper, coconut, pineapple, durian and even cocoa but now? Even Cameron Highlands, which has the soil and the weather to grow fruits and vegetables is increasingly being pillaged for condominiums and resorts. 

All this is a result of the government’s cultivation of “rent seeking” culture that sorry to say, even the royals have jumped into All this breeds short sightedness, laziness in the pursuit of quick gains at the expense of hard work and efforts Soon, we will be the major importer of almost everything

Malaysiakini : As the global food system shudders with every blast that strikes Ukraine, cracks have started forming in Malaysia’s food security landscape, exposing policies that prioritise cash crops over food cultivation, experts said.

Disjointed agriculture policies over the years, monopolies in local production and imports, and research-deficient agricultural practices are likely factors that led to Malaysia’s food insecurity today.

Describing the pre-independence economy to be largely extractive of the country’s natural resources, Universiti Putra Malaysia Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Food Security research fellow Fatimah Mohamed Arshad said Malaysia’s economy remained largely agrarian until the country started diversifying in the 1970s.

“But we have to thank them for bringing rubber trees from Brazil and oil palm from Africa,” the professor quipped, explaining that the country’s coloniser’s commodity-dependent economy initially flourished on rubber and tin.  Since then, she said, the country’s agricultural efforts have been lopsided to favour cash crops, epitomised in monocrop oil palm plantations across 80 percent of the country’s agricultural land, covering 5.9 million hectares.

This is despite three national agriculture policies from 1984 to 2010, two national agrifood policies since 2011 and 40 different laws regulating food and food security.

According to the Department of Statistics, the country experienced a trade deficit in food products amounting to RM21.7 billion in 2020 as the nation had imported food products worth RM55.5 billion while exporting only RM33.8 billion.

The trade deficit in this sector was a 24.9 percent spike from the previous year. Malaysia’s food supply per capita has grown over the years, but much of the growth is due to imports, read a study by Khazanah Research Institute on food security published in 2019.