PETALING JAYA – The food production crisis and the high price of essentials plaguing the country are due to the changing climate and the high cost of importing fertilisers and other farming essentials.
Farmer Zaheer Zechariah said the most profitable time to plant is from January to September, but heavy rains and cloud cover have an impact on the yields.
He said for him, the present weather conditions had hurt his farm’s yield, compared to the last one to three years ago when the farm yield had been much higher.
“The present government is not to be blamed for the problems faced by farmers today. Governments over the last nine years had been warned about global warming but had ignored it.
“They had neither prepared farmers nor taken proactive measures to deal with the problem.”
He said rice supply is now becoming an issue as India has banned its exports and Vietnam is slowly cutting down on its exports.
He added all this was due to the unpredictable weather pattern, which is hurting yield and production.
Citing an example of high chicken price and low production, he said all the corn used in chicken feed is imported and charged in US dollars.
Zaheer, who owns a farm in Dengkil, said solutions can be found as long as agriculture officials move from officialdom and start being pragmatic.
“To overcome the issue of high cost of importing corn, land should be set aside to grow corn for chicken feed to mitigate the import cost.
“The same can be done for growing specialised grass for cow feed. This will help reduce the country’s reliance on imports.”
He said that as a farmer, he noticed a lot of unproductive land left abandoned.
This land can be used to encourage people to use it for farming to help improve the nation’s food security, he said.
Need for locally produced fertiliser
He said the government needs to encourage local companies to start producing fertilisers locally so farmers and consumers will not be exposed to international chaos and be more self-reliant.
Zaheer said previously a bag of 25kg of calcium nitrate fertiliser was about RM45 but today, the price is touching RM105.
He pointed out that with such high costs, the production of food will not be cheap, and consumers in the end will have to pay higher prices.
He said even the price of fertiliser has gone up to RM100 for a 50kg bag from about RM50 previously.
He said in the past, farmers used to rely on imports but luckily, Petronas stepped in to produce the product while keeping prices affordable.
He said the government needs to encourage more companies to follow suit, as this will help bring down the cost of production.
“To encourage food security, agriculture officials, especially Fama, should encourage the use of technology in farming, such as vertical farming, to reduce land use while increasing production.
“Building rain shelters for farmers to protect their crops will help deal with climate change and the unpredictable weather pattern while keeping yields high.” – The Vibes, September 20, 2023
