Sarawak soon to become Malaysia's top producer of rice

Sarawak soon to become Malaysia's top producer of rice


Regional industry: Top, rice drying outside a traditional long house. Bottom, paddy fields in Bario in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak. Pictures: flickr.com, picasaweb.google.com
JULIA YEOW
KUALA LUMPUR

Saturday, July 26, 2008

ONCE known for its untamed forests, rich cultural diversity and some of Asia's most exotic beasts, Malaysia's state of Sarawak on Borneo island might soon add another feather to its cap of attributes — the country's major producer of rice. The government is looking to the country's largest state, which covers five million hectares and makes up 35 per cent of Malaysia's land, as a potential key to resolving the increasingly worrying problem of low rice yields.

Rice, a staple food in Malaysian homes, has traditionally been planted in the northern states of eastern Malaysia, namely in Kedah, which is also known as the "Rice Bowl of Malaysia".

Kedah, and to a lesser extent the neighbouring state of Perlis, used to account for more than half the total 700,000 hectares of rice fields in the country, but over the past five years, an increasing number of paddy fields have been abandoned, largely because of a labour shortage, higher energy and fertiliser costs, and declining soil quality.

In 2000, the country produced 2.36 million tons of rice, or slightly less than 75 per cent of what the country consumed, leading the government to import more than 500,000 tons of rice from neighbouring Thailand and other countries, such as Myanmar and India.

Six years later, Malaysia's rice production covered barely 70 per cent of the needs of its 26 million people. Government agencies have said that unless the trend is reversed, the country would have to import close to 40 per cent of its rice by 2010.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi recently shelved several large developmental projects to pledge an additional US$9 billion ($12 billion) to raise rice production and ease poverty in the country as food prices escalate.

The government has also now turned to Sarawak and the smaller neighbouring state of Sabah in its hopes to raise the nation's rice self-sufficiency to at least 80 per cent by 2010.

Agriculture Minister Mustapa Mohamed told Parliament recently that aid would be given to rice-production ventures in the state, adding that several large areas of land in Sarawak had already been identified as possible cultivation sites.

"We want to strive so that Sabah and Sarawak can produce up to 86 per cent of the country's production," Mustapa said.

Abdullah's government has also urged private corporations to take up large-scale food-production ventures.

The first to take up the challenge was palm oil giant Sime Darby, which recently announced it has identified 7,000 hectares of land in Sarawak suitable for rice cultivation.

Sime Darby, the world's largest producer of palm oil, plans to use advanced technology rather than existing production methods to produce higher rice yields, chairman Musa Hitam said.

"God willing, it will be more than the average produced now," he said. "The Sarawak state government is positive about this, and they will make available more land."

Musa, who said details of the project have yet to be released, promised other similar ventures were to come.

Aside from opening up new land for cultivation, state Deputy Chief Minister George Chan has urged the government to introduce more financial incentives to farmers to improve planting methods.

"Our people have been planting paddy on the best spot for years, so it's best to improve existing farms," he said.

Chan also hailed new research efforts to come up with hybrid rice stocks.

"We have to think ahead and start producing rice with a certain value," he said.

While hopes are riding high that new technology and ample land in Sarawak would be the answer to the country's food shortage, others are concerned about the inevitable environmental impact that widespread clearance of land for paddy cultivation would have on the state's ecosystem.

"The effects go beyond the sheer disappearance of trees," said Shailendra Yashwant, campaign director of Greenpeace South-East Asia. "We are talking about biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, social upheaval and yet another spike in greenhouse gas emissions, all of which Malaysia can ill afford."

But with increasing prices of fuel and no immediate end to surges in the global prices of food, environmental losses could become an occupational hazard if more corporations look to Sarawak as they hop onto the rice-producing bandwagon.

DPA