Hidden crisis: Malaysia’s food security blind spots

Let’s start by reflecting on the term ‘food security’

What should this mean to the planning departments in government agencies? How should national planners evaluate the status of the country’s food supply ‘security’? Is it by listing the self-sufficiency levels of common food items consumed by the people? And then somehow combining them to give an overall self-sufficiency level?

Should we give weightage to any of the food items? Are all food items equally important when assessing food security?

We need to evaluate and plan for our food security by asking a crucial question: would we be able to feed the people of Malaysia if there is a severe disruption in world food supply chains (especially if that international situation also disrupts Malaysia’s exports leaving the country with a negative trade balance).

In considering this question, we have to bear in mind the dearth of solidarity displayed in 2021, when rich countries acquired all the available Covid vaccines, leaving the poorest nations with hardly any vaccines. 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 global shortage of wheat develops? Rich country with probably rush to stockpile wheat, worsening the shortage and driving up wheat prices to impossible levels.

Malaysia is actually insecure with regards to its caloric requirements, the most important component of food security of any population. [The US Department of Agriculture uses a caloric threshold of 2,100 calories per capita per day to evaluate the food security status of countries.]

Malaysia’s caloric requirements are met primarily by rice (62% – 3 million tonnes consumed in 2024) and wheat (38% – 1.8 million tonnes). Currently, we import all the wheat we consume and about half of the rice we consume. What this means is Malaysia only produces about 31% of the caloric requirements of its people.

The country is obviously in a vulnerable situation! Domestic production of grains and other caloric-rich food products has to be ramped up.

This is a crucial step to bolster Malaysia’s food security status.

Current context

We need to consider the following sources of calories.

Rice

We now use about 640,000ha of agricultural land (out of a total of 8.4 million hectares of agricultural land in the country) for rice production. This works out to 7.6%.

But the productivity of our rice farmers is generally low. The average yield in the major rice-growing regions in the country is about five tonnes of paddy 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 rice farmers, who number some 220,000, make up one of the poorest groups in the country. This of course leads to an out-migration of the younger generation from the paddy farmlands and to the ongoing conversion of paddy land into residential and other projects.

The are many factors causing the low income of farmers including:

• 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 paddy. Over the years, many of the smaller mills have closed down, leaving a concentrated field
• rising costs of seeds, pesticides and services such as ploughing, planting seedlings and harvesting

The government subsidises the paddy sector by about RM2.6bn per year.

However, as the president of Pesawah, a coalition representing rice farmers revealed, only 20% of this aid is paid directly to the rice farmers.

The remainder is channelled 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 three million tonnes of rice annually. We produce a little less than 50% of this domestically.

Wheat

This is a component of the many types of bread that the people of Malaysia consume.

Unfortunately, wheat is not cultivated in Malaysia. We therefore have to import all the wheat that we consume. That was 1.8 million metric tons in 2024, with Australia and Canada the two most important source countries.

Other foodstuffs with high caloric value – maize and tubers

Maize grows well in Malaysia. So do a variety of tubers – tapioca, sweet potato, white potato and yam. Tapioca was actually a staple food for many families during World War Two.

However, tubers are seen as poor person’s diet and they are not popular with the people.

Enhancing caloric self-sufficiency

Becoming fully self-sufficient in rice

At present only 7.6% of agricultural land in Malaysia (640,000 hectares) is use for growing rice, 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, using more than half the gazetted agricultural land 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 paddy over the next five years so that an additional 200,000ha of land is brought into rice cultivation.

To put this in perspective, 200,000ha only constitutes less than 5% of the roughly 4.5 million hectare of plantation land currently used for oil palm cultivation. (Smallholders make up the other 1.5 million hectares under oil palm cultivation.)

Adequate funds should be allocated by the government to improve the quality and reliability of irrigation in traditional rice-producing regions, so that the yield per hectare can be increased.

Leakages in the current system of subsidies for rice farmers have to be plugged. For example, the rice farmers have asked that their fertiliser subsidy be given as cash vouchers so that they can choose the type of fertiliser that they need. (Currently, fertilisers are supplied by middlemen.)

The government has to attend to the welfare of rice farmers so that rice farming becomes a more attractive career option.

Among the measures that could be implemented:

• increasing the production incentive from the current RM500 per tonne of paddy to RM900
• institute a pension scheme of RM500 per month for all rice farmers who have spent 10 years or more in the rice farming sector once they reach 60  

Contingency plans for global wheat shortages

This may not happen in the near future. But given climate change and geopolitical uncertainties, any serious food security plan for Malaysia should consider this scenario and develop well thought out plans to deal with it.

One component of such a contingency plan would be to rely more on tubers, yams and maize for the caloric needs of our population.

The market for tubers and yams is not very big 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:

• 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
• Develop the technology to prepare flour from these tubers
• Promote the popularity of these tubers and yams by holding cooking competitions, sharing recipes and serving them to VIPs at government functions

For now, we need to create the ecosystem for the production, processing and consumption of various tubers. This capacity can be ramped up if there is a global wheat shortage.

Undermined by ‘development’

While these food items are not as crucially important compared to the high-caloric foodstuffs we discussed earlier, they are important in providing sufficient protein and a balanced diet for the people.

Unfortunately, many of these food producing sectors are being undermined by the forms of ‘development’ taking place in the country.

Let’s discuss the situation.

Vegetable farmers

Most of these farmers can be found near the 540-odd “new villages” that dot the west coast states of the peninsula. These new villages were set up under the Briggs Plan in 1950-52 to prevent the rural population from providing food to the communist insurgents.

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 the day as the British recognised their importance as food suppliers.

Most of these farmers continued with their farming activities following the independence of Malaya in 1957. But few were awarded titles to the land they were tilling by the Malayan and then the Malaysian government. But as the land they were working on did not have much economic value back 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 selling farmland to housing developers and other development projects. Thousands of 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 Kinta used to be the largest producer of fresh vegetables and fruit in Perak. Over the past 30 years, 2,900 acres or 95% of the area used for “market gardening” in that region, was sold to either state-owned companies such as the Perak State Development Corporation and the Perak State Agricultural Development Corporation (PPPNP) or to private developers. [Market gardening refers to the cultivation of vegetables, fruits and tubers, as well as the rearing of fresh-water fish.

Of the 2,900 acres sold, the resident farmers have already been evicted from about 1,200 acres.

In another 200 acres, 45 farmers are facing court action (in five separate cases) by the new owners of the land – government-linked companies and private developers. 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 land use.

The farmers on the remaining 1,500 acres have not yet been visited by the new land owners. But it is only a matter of time before they too will be evicted.

The vegetable farmers face another problem: 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 agreement also specifically prohibits the raising of any existing tariffs.

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 the depressed market price does not even cover the cost of harvesting and transporting of the vegetables to the market.     

At present, farmers in Malaysia only produce about 60% of the vegetables the people consume. The ongoing evictions of vegetable farmers and the failure to stabilise vegetable prices are decimating local farming communities. These farmers have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from their three generations of tending the soil.

This expertise, unfortunately, is not appreciated by the powers controlling land sales. As a result, a vital human resource is being rapidly dissipated.  

Fish farmers and fisherfolk

Freshwater fish farmers are located in the vegetable farming areas discussed in the preceding section. They too are being evicted along with the vegetable farmers.

Saltwater 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 the coast of the mainland up till northern Perak is an important source of fish for the country.

Unfortunately, this region will be badly affected by the southern Penang Island land reclamation project that the Penang government is keen on. This land reclamation project will destroy the breeding grounds of many species of fish.

In addition, sand mining leads to an increase in organic matter in the sea water. This can cause an explosive growth of algae and other micro-organisms that deplete the oxygen dissolved in sea water, leading to the asphyxia of fish.

A group of coastal fishermen filed a legal challenge to the environmental impact assessment report for the southern Penang reclamation 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 in 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 (see endnote) have shown that allowing cattle to graze in oil palm estates actually reduces costs and increases the oil palm yields.

How? Management does not need to spend as much on herbicides. Instead, the cattle graze on and reduce the undergrowth. The reduction in herbicide use promotes the proliferation of birds and insects in these estates. This leads to a higher rate of pollination and thus higher yields 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 in their discussion with Sime Darby. So far, Sime Darby has not moved from its position, despite corroboration by ministry experts that integrated farming actually reduces costs, increases biodiversity and improves yields in oil palm estates.

Preserving vegetable, fish and cattle farming

We urgently need to impress on policymakers that preserving the nation’s capacity to produce food is crucially important to national security and the people’s wellbeing.

Food production should be given much higher priority when economic ‘development’ plans are drawn up. Much can be done to stop the ongoing erosion of the nation’s food production capacity.

Market gardeners

State governments should be asked to review the sale of food-producing farmlands for residential or industrial purposes. If such projects are thought necessary, agricultural land used for oil palm cultivation should be acquired by the state for the development projects. Farmland used for market gardening should be preserved.

The National Land Code needs to be revised to require the creation of an oversight committee in each state. Its members should be drawn from state-level bodies, including NGOs and farmers associations, to monitor and vet the sale of farmlands for ‘development’. This oversight committee must be independent of the state’s executive branch for it to play an effective role.

The government should revoke the sale of food-producing farmlands that have not yet been destroyed. The state government can use the Land Acquisition Act to re-acquire the land and lease it to the vegetable farmers with agreements that commit them 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.

The government must renegotiate the Asean free trade agreement to enable import restriction provisions to protect domestic food production. These provisions should enable the government to use a mixture of tariffs and import quotas to ensure that cheap food in any Asean country does not undermine its neighbours’ food production.

With artificial intelligence (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 bought each month, acreages of newly planted vegetables and the market demand for various types of vegetable. These would enable farmers to make more informed decisions regarding which crops to plant.

Fish farmers and fisherfolk

We need to set up an agency that has the expertise to review plans to develop coastal regions from the perspective of preserving our fisheries reserves.

Laws governing environmental impact assessment studies need to be modified. These studies should be commissioned by the Department for the Environment and not by the project mover. The DfE could levy a charge on the project mover for this service. Such a provision would render environmental impact studies a lot more objective.

Under the current system, the environmental consultants bend over backwards to make sure that their client, the prospective developer, succeeds in itss bid for the project.

The southern Penang Island reclamation project should be called off.

Cattle farmers

Stop the ongoing harassment of cattle farmers on Sime Darby estates.

The Ministry of Agriculture should form a committee which includes both Sime Darby and representatives of the cattle farmers to work out a set of guidelines on cattle farming in oil palm estates.

Food security framework lacking

Malaysia lacks a coherent food security framework despite giving lip service to its importance.

Conceptual errors, ignorance, a short-sighted focus on immediate financial gain for certain parties, and self-interest are some obstacles. These have obstructed the formulation of a rational, comprehensive plan to protect and enhance food production capacity in the country. Such a plan needs to emphasise 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 concerned about food security when, in reality, our actions are seriously undermining it.

Endnote

Studies on cattle farming in oil palm estates:

A financial study of cattle integration in oil palm plantations, J Latif, MN Mamat, Oil Palm Industry Economic Journal, 2002

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 

Cattle grazing benefits farmland bird community composition in oil palm plantations – KA Tohiran et al, Ornithological science, 2019

Integrated tree crops-ruminants systems in South East Asia: Advances in productivity enhancement and environmental sustainability,  C Devendra, Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, 2011t

The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.

AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama

1. Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
2. Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
3. Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
4. Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
5. Lawan rasuah dan kronisme

Support Aliran's work with an online donation. Scan this QR code using your mobile phone e-wallet or banking app: