March 19, 2010

Various efforts are being undertaken to step up food production to reduce Malaysia's dependence on food imports, the House of Representatives was told Wednesday (Mar 17).

Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Noh Omar said these included five high-impact projects, which would also help raise the nation's rate of food self-sufficiency.

The projects were the Permanent Food Production Park, contract farming, National Feedlot Centre (NFC), Aquaculture Industrial Zone and development of 15,000 agro-based entrepreneurs, he said.

Noh said the government would continue to focus on padi production through the Food Supply Guarantee Policy 2008-2010 which provided allocations for irrigation canal maintenance, land levelling, provision of additional fertiliser and such.

"Productivity will also be raised through research and development on diversity, high quality stock and seedlings as well as disease resistance," he said.

"Production of rice is now at 70%, beef and buffalo meat at 27% and lamb at 10.3%. We realise that the population is growing but human resource in the agriculture sector is decreasing," he said.

The government was also identifying several areas abroad to encourage government-linked companies to invest in the food sector and the products to be imported, he added.