I would like to start off by inviting everyone to reflect on the term “Food Security”. What should this mean to the planning departments in government agencies? How should national planners evaluate the status of our “security” with respect to food supply in our country? Is it by listing the self-sufficiency levels (SSLs) of the common food items consumed by our population? And then somehow summating them to give an aggregate over-all SSL? Should we give weightage to any of the food items? Are all food items equally important when assessing food security?
I would argue that we should evaluate and plan for our food security by asking this crucial question: would we be able to feed our population if there is severe disruption in world food supply chains[1]? In considering this question, we have to bear in mind the dearth of solidarity displayed in 2021, when the rich countries acquired all the available Covid vaccines, leaving the poorest nations with hardly any vaccines[2]. If that was their response with regard to what was considered to be a crucial life-saving vaccine, do we expect anything different if a shortage of wheat were to develop in the international commodity markets? It is likely that the rich countries will rush to stockpile wheat, exacerbating the shortage and driving the price of wheat to impossible levels.
Malaysia is actually very insecure with regards to its caloric requirements, the most important component of food security of any population[3]. Malaysia’s caloric requirements are met primarily by rice (62%) and wheat (38%).4 Currently we import all the wheat we consume and about half of the rice we consume. In other words, we only produce about 31% of the caloric requirements of the Malaysian population. We obviously are in a very vulnerable situation! We need to onshore much more of the production of grains and other caloric-rich food products.
Enhancing Caloric Sufficiency
This is a crucial step to bolster Malaysia’s food security status. In this context, we need to consider the following.
With regards to rice:
- We now utilize about 640,000 ha of agricultural land (out of a total of 8.4 mil hectares of agricultural land in the country) for rice production – works out to 7.6%. But,
- the productivity of our rice farmers is generally low. The average yield in the major padi growing regions in the country is about 5 tonnes of padi per hectare per year. This is less than half the yield in Sekinchang, Selangor where the farmers attain 11 tonnes per hectare per year.
- Our padi farmers, who number some 220,000, make up one of the poorest groups in our country. This of course leads to an out-migration of the younger generation from the padi farmlands and also to the ongoing conversion of padi land into residential and other projects.
- there are many factors causing low income of farmers including
– owning small plots of farmland - malfunctioning irrigation systems. The water does not come at the right times and in the correct amounts
- excessive deductions for moisture content (up to 30% of the weight of the padi) by the mills buying the padi. Over the years, many of the smaller padi mills have closed down, leaving a very concentrated field.
- escalating costs of seeds, pesticides, services such as ploughing, planting seedlings, harvesting, etc
- The government subsidises the padi sector to a tune of about RM 2.6 billion per year. However, as the president of Pesawah, a coalition representing padi farmers revealed, only 20% of this aid is paid directly to the padi farmers. The remainder is channeled through non-governmental agencies which, according to the farmers, do not function as efficiently (or honestly) as they should. For example, the fertilisers provided are not suitable to the soil conditions of some farms and are often delivered too late.
- Malaysia consumes 3 million tonnes of rice annually. We produce a little less than 50% of this domestically.
- With regard to wheat. This is a component of many types of bread that Malaysians consume. Unfortunately, wheat is not cultivated in Malaysia. We therefore have to import all the wheat that we consume. That was 1.82 million metric tons in 2024 with Australia and Canada being the two most important source countries.
- Other foodstuffs with high caloric value – corn and tubers
- corn grows well in Malaysia. So too do a variety of tubers – tapioca, sweet potato, white potato and yam. Tapioca formed the staple food for many families during the Second World War.
- however, tubers are seen as comprising a poor man’s diet and are not very popular with the Malaysian public.
I. Steps required to enhance caloric self sufficiency
A. Increasing SSL for Rice to 100%
a/ At present only 7.6% of agricultural land in Malaysia (640,000 hectares) is utilized for growing padi. 71.4% is committed to oil palm and 11.9% to rubber. Rubber is largely produced by smallholders. But large plantations are dominant in the oil palm sector, utilizing more than half the land gazetted for agriculture in the country. The government should require all plantation companies owning more than a thousand acres of land to convert a certain percentage of their land to cultivate wet padi such that, over the next 5 years, an additional 200,000 hectares of land is brought into padi cultivation. To put this in perspective, 200,000 ha only constitutes less than 5% of the roughly 4.5 million ha of plantation land currently utilized for oil palm cultivation. (Smallholders constitute the other 1.5 million ha under oil palm cultivation
b/ Adequate funds should be allocated by the government to improve the quality and reliability of irrigation in our traditional padi producing regions, so that the yield per hectare can be increased.
c/ Leakages in the current system of subsidies for padi farmers have to be plugged. For example, the padi farmers have asked that their fertilizer subsidy be given as cash vouchers so that they can choose the type of fertilizer that they need. (Currently it is supplied by middlemen.)
d/ Attending to the welfare of padi farmers so that padi farming becomes a more attractive career option. Among the measures that could be implemented are
– increasing the production incentive from the current RM 500 per tonne of padi to RM 900
- instituting an old age pension scheme of RM 500 a month for all padi farmers who have spent an aggregate of 10 years or more in the padi-farming sector once they reach the age of 60 years.
B. Contingency plans for a scenario when there is a shortage of wheat in the international markets.
This may not happen in the near future. But given climate change and geo-political uncertainties, any serious plan for food security for the Malaysian population should consider this scenario and develop well thought out plans to deal with it, should such a scenario ever develop. One component of such a contingency plan would be to rely more on tubers, yams and corn for the caloric needs of our population.
The market for tubers and yams isn’t very high in Malaysia at present as wheat flour is available at affordable prices. But we need to prepare for a situation where we might have to rely on this food source for our caloric needs. The government should
a/ Encourage local farmers to produce tapioca, sweet potato, arrow fruit, yam, sago and other similar high caloric value foodstuff by entering into forward contracts with local farmers.
b/ Develop the technology to prepare flour from these tubers.
c/ Promote the popularity of these tubers and yams by holding cooking competitions, sharing resipes and by serving them to VIPs at government functions.
At this point in time, we need to create the eco-system for the production, processing and consumption of various tubers. This capacity can be ramped up in scale if there is a shortage of wheat in the international markets.
II. Preserving / Enhancing our Capacity to produce Vegetables, Fish, Beef and Dairy Products.
While these foodstuffs are not as crucially important as compared to the high caloric foodstuffs we discussed in the section above, nevertheless, these food items are important in providing sufficient protein and a balanced diet to our population. Unfortunately, many of these food producing sectors are being undermined by the forms of “development” taking place in the country. The situation is as follows –
Vegetable Farmers
Most of these farmers can be found in the vicinity of the 540 odd New Villages that dot the West Coast States of Peninsular Malaysia. These New Villages were set up under the Briggs Plan in 1950-1952 to prevent the rural population from providing food to the communist insurgency. Thousands of small farmers were forced by the British to move into these new villages. Their homes on their farms were razed. But they were allowed to go and tend to their fields during daylight hours as the British recognized their importance as the suppliers of food for the Malayan population.
Most of these farmers continued with their farming activities following Independence in 1957, but very few of them were awarded grants to the land they were tilling by the Malayan / Malaysian government. But, as the land they were working on did not have much economic value then, they were allowed to carry on. However, the development of urban areas, and the birth of the private housing market, changed that. State governments began alienating farmland to housing developers and other development projects and thousands of these vegetable farmers have been evicted from the land they had been tilling since before World War Two.
For example, the Chemor-Kuala Kuang- Tanah Hitam region in the Kinta District of Perak used to be the largest producer of fresh vegetables and fruit in Perak. Over the past 30 years, 2900 acres, or 95% of the area used for “market gardening”5 in that region, was alienated to either State owned companies such as the PKNP (Perbadanan Kemajuan Negeri Perak) and the PPPNP (Perbadanan Pembangunan Pertanian Negeri Perak) or to private developers. Of the 2900 acres alienated, the resident farmers have already been evicted from about 1200 acres. In another 200 acres the farmers are facing court action by the new owners of the land – the government GLCs and private developers6. If the government remains indifferent to their plight, they too will be evicted, as the Torrens Land System introduced by the British during the colonial era vests the right to land in the person awarded the land title, irrespective of the history of occupation or utilisation of the land. The farmers of the remaining 1500 acres haven’t been visited by the new land owners yet, but it is only a matter of time before they too will be evicted.
Another problem faced by the vegetable farmers is the unregulated import of vegetables and fruit from neighbouring countries. Because of the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, 99% of all goods traded among ASEAN countries are now at zero tariff. The ASEAN FTA also specifically prohibits the raising of any existing tariff. This situation results in the intermittent flooding of the Malaysian market with Thai or Vietnamese vegetables and fruits whenever there is a good harvest in those countries. This results in the collapse of prices for these items, sometimes to the extent that the depressed market price does not even cover the cost of harvesting and transporting of the vegetables to the market.
At present Malaysian farmers only produce about 60% of the vegetables that we consume. The ongoing eviction of vegetable farmers and the failure to stabilize vegetable prices is decimating our local farming communities who have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from their 3 generations of tending the soil. This expertise, unfortunately, is not appreciated by the powers controlling land alienation, and as a result, a vital human resource is being rapidly dissipated.
Fish Farmers / Fishermen
Freshwater fish farmers are located in the vegetable farming areas that we discussed in the preceding section, and they are being evicted along with the vegetable farmers. Salt water fish farmers and coastal fishermen are badly affected by pollution arising from household and industrial waste, as well as by sand mining and land reclamation projects.
The region comprising the south of Penang Island and coast of the mainland up till northern Perak is an important source of fish for the country. Unfortunately, this region will be very badly affected by the Penang South Island land reclamation project that the Penang government seems very keen on. This land reclamation project will destroy the breeding grounds of many species of fish. In addition, sand mining leads to the increase in organic matter in the sea water. This can cause an explosive growth of algae and other micro-organisms that depletes the oxygen dissolved in sea water, leading to the asphyxia of fish.
A group of coastal fishermen have filed a legal challenge to the Environmental Impact Assessment report for the Penang South Island project. They lost at the High Court and have taken their case to the Appeal Court.
Cattle Farmers
Many of the cattle farmers in Malaysia are the children or grandchildren of estate workers who were encouraged to rear cattle on the estates they worked in. For some unfathomable reason, Sime Darby, which occupies 1.25 million hectares of agricultural land, has announced a “zero-cattle” policy, and is now attempting to evict these cattle farmers from all Sime Darby estates.
The Sime Darby policy is perplexing, as numerous studies have shown that allowing cattle to graze in oil palm estates actually reduces costs and increases the yield of the oil palm crop7. This is because the management does not need to spend as much on spraying herbicides as the cattle graze on and reduce the undergrowth. The reduction in herbicide use promotes the proliferation of birds and insects in these estates, leading to a higher rate of pollination and thus higher yield of oil palm fruit bunches.
The affected cattle farmers have formed a national coordinating committee and are trying to involve the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MOAFS) in their discussion with Sime Darby. So far Sime Darby has remained “recalcitrant”, despite corroboration by MOAFS experts that integrated farming actually reduces costs, increases biodiversity and improves yield in oil palm estates.
Steps required to protect and promote vegetable, fish and cattle farming
There is an urgent need to impress on policy makers that preserving the nation’s capacity to produce food is crucially important to national security and the well-being of our population, and that it should be given a much higher priority when economic “development” plans are drawn up. Much can be done to stop the ongoing erosion of food production capacity.
Market Gardeners
a/ State governments should be asked to review the alienation of food-producing farmlands for residential or industrial purposes. If such projects are thought necessary, agricultural land utilised for oil palm cultivation should be acquired by the state for the development projects. Farmland used for market gardening should be preserved.
b/ The National Land Code needs to be revised to require the creation of an over-sight committee in each State, with members drawn from state level bodies including NGOs and farmer’s associations, to monitor and vet the alienation of farmlands for “development”. This oversight committee must be independent of the executive branch of the State for it to play an effective role.
c/ The government should revoke the alienation of food producing farmlands that have not yet been destroyed. The State government can use the Land Acquisition Act to reacquire the land, and lease it out to the vegetable farmers with agreements that commit the farmers to only grow food crops on the land leased to them. The Federal Government may need to intervene to provide a portion of the funds for acquiring the land.
d/ The government must re-negotiate the ASEAN FTA to enable import restriction provisions to protect domestic food production. These provision should enable the government to use a mixture of tariffs and import quotas to ensure that cheap food in any ASEAN countries does not undermine food production in its neighbours.
e/ With AI and Big Data being in vogue, the government should set up an online national information board that tracks and displays several parameters that will be help vegetable farmers decide which type of vegetable to plant at any point in time. Parameters that should be tracked are the amount of various vegetable seeds purchased each month, acreages of newly planted vegetables and the market demand for various types of vegetable. These would enable farmers to make better informed decisions regarding which crops to plant.
Fish farmers and Fishermen
a/ Set up an agency that has the expertise to review plans to develop coastal regions from the perspective of preserving our fisheries reserves.
b/ Modify the laws governing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies. These studies should be commissioned by the Department of Environment (DOE) and not by the project mover. The DOE could levy a charge on the project mover for this service. Such a provision would render EIA studies a lot more objective. Under the current system, the EIA consultants bend over backwards to make sure that their client, the prospective developer, succeeds in his bid for the project.
c/ Call off the proposed Penang South Island project.
Cattle Farmers
a/ Stop the ongoing harassment of cattle farmers on Sime Darby Estates.
b/ The Ministry of Agriculture should form a committee which includes both Sime Darby as well as representatives of the cattle-rearers to work out a set of guidelines pertaining to cattle rearing in oil palm estates.
Concluding remarks
As this brief paper highlights, Malaysia lacks a coherent Food Security framework despite giving lip-service to the importance of the same. Conceptual errors, ignorance, short-sighted focus on immediate financial gain for certain parties and self-interest have obstructed the formulation of a rational, comprehensive plan to protect and enhance food production capacity in the country with an emphasis on the domestic production of high caloric value grains and tubers. If these barriers are not acknowledged and addressed, we will continue to piously assert that we are very concerned about food security when in actual fact our actions are seriously undermining it.
Jeyakumar Devaraj.
Chairperson, PSM
26/2/2025
Notes
Especially if that international situation also disrupts our exports such that we have a negative trade balance
Canada and Australia purchased 5 times the amount of Covid vaccines that their populations required, while countries in Africa struggled to vaccinate their population. For example, Kenya only managed to vaccinate 1.4% of its population by the end of 2021, compared with a 61% vaccination rate in Britain.
The US Department of Agriculture uses a caloric threshold of 2100 calories per capita per day to evaluate the food security status of countries. (Lila Cardell et al. Science Direct. Vol 41, June 2024)
2024 – 3 million metric tons of rice consumed in Msia (https://www.statista.com)
2024 – 1.82 million tons of wheat consumed in Malaysia. (indexmundi.com)
Market gardening – the cultivation of vegetables, fruits and tubers as well as rearing of fresh water fish.
Ongoing Court Cases involving farmers in Kinta District as of February 2025
Site
Number of farmers / acres
Party attempting to evict the farmers
Tanah Hitam
11 farmers / 24 acres
Land Office Kinta
Changkat Kinding
7 farmers / 35 acres
Subsidiary of LBS Holdings
Chemor
18 farmers / 90 acres
Subsidiaries of Liew Yin Yin Land Sdn Bhd
Kanthan
5 farmers / 30 acres
PKNP
Kuala Kuang
4 farmers / 20 acres
Eadepro Development Sdn Bhd
i) A financial study of cattle integration in oil palm plantations
J Latif, MN Mamat – Oil Palm Industry Economic Journal, 2002
ii) Cattle-oil palm integration – a viable strategy to increase Malaysian beef self-sufficiency and palm oil sustainability. Natascha A. Grinnell et al. Livestock Science May 2002
iii) Cattle grazing benefits farmland bird community composition in oil palm plantations
KA Tohiran et al. Ornithological science, 2019
iv) Integrated tree crops-ruminants systems in South East Asia: Advances in productivity enhancement and environmental sustainability.
C Devendra. Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, 2011