MALAYSIA hopes to increase production of food, including of animal feed, to reduce its RM50 billion food import bill, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Deputy Minister Sim Tze Tzin said.

He said 40,000ha of uncultivated Felda land will be used to plant vegetables and cash crops as well as breed livestock.

Sim said Felda farmers must diversify their skills to weather the slump in the palm oil business.

“They must learn to plant vegetables and mushrooms, and rear livestock. The ministry can share expertise with them,” he told reporters today during a visit to WorldFish, an international non-profit organisation based in Penang that conducts research on fisheries and aquaculture to reduce hunger and feed the poor.

Sim said the government is also trying to cut dependence on imported animal feed like corn, soy and fish meal.

“Animal feed imports cost us RM3 billion. We are looking at cutting that by 10%. That means there is RM300 million worth of business opportunities for local farmers.

“The challenge is getting farmers to use the right crops and the right varieties to produce our own animal feed,” he said.

Sim said the Malaysian Agriculture Research and Development Institute (Mardi) is identifying a suitable variety of corn to produce animal feed.

“They are experimenting to find the right one for our weather to introduce it to farmers so we can reduce our dependence on imported animal feed,” he said.

Pakatan Harapan has made boosting farming a priority to slash the country’s food and livestock feed import bill that averages RM50 billion a year.

The nation’s reliance on food imports has been blamed for the steep price of produce due to the high exchange rate for the US dollar.

Government adviser and Council of Eminent Persons chairman Daim Zainuddin said in an interview that the government has channelled a lot of research and effort into bolstering the industry, especially via adopting technology to improve crop yields and reduce manual labour. He said modern farming is the future.

Sim Malaysia imported a lot of food because it has limited land to grow food.

Of the 7.8 million hectares of agriculture land in Malaysia, only a million hectares is cultivated to grow food for the people. And of these one million hectares, 600,000 hectares are padi fields producing rice and the remainder for growing vegetables and poultry and livestock.

Malaysia is “not doing great but also not doing so bad” at producing food for its 30 million people for a country with limited land resources, Sim said.
 
He said agro-food imports in 2017 amounted to RM52 billion, but Malaysia also exported RM30 billion worth of food.

“Most of the food we import are animal feed, potatoes and vegetables we cannot produce here, wheat and some premium fish.”

Sim said some imports can be profitable.
 
“We import coffee beans. We add value to these by making three-in-one instant coffee mix, which we export to other countries.

“Malaysia is quite well-known for its instant coffee products.”