WRONG agricultural practices are the reason why there is widespread rural poverty, Dr Mahathir Mohamad said, adding that small land holding is neither efficient nor economical.

“Today, rural poverty is a fact of life. It is largely due to the wrong agricultural practices. It is time that we change,” he said in a blogpost.

The former prime minister said there is something wrong with the local agriculture industry today as, even after independence, there are still locals owning small, uneconomical land holdings.

He said smallholding is not economical or efficient. Large estates are still needed.

“This is obvious. But we make no attempt to correct this. Also, we did not think of mix-farming to mitigate downturns,” he said.

“It is time that we acknowledge these mistakes and correct them. Firstly, we need to make the holdings big. How do we do this? The obvious answer is to amalgamate the smallholdings so as to have a big enough estate.

“Landowners will not like it. But models of large estates of, say, a thousand acres should be developed by Mardi or some private enterprise,” Dr Mahathir added.

The Langkawi MP said the thousand acres of land should be managed by trained farm managers with local labour, adding that farm managers should be trained at universities.

“Once we have demonstrated the profitability of large farms and mix-farming, the smallholders would be more willing to have their small holdings amalgamated to form farms of a thousand acres or more,” he said.

Dr Mahathir said landowners should get a share of the profit, which is equivalent to the size of their land and they can then choose to work or simply enjoy the profits.

However, he said ownership of the land should remain with land owners.

“They should retain their grants to assure them that they have not been expropriated,” he added.

Dr Mahathir said the proposal should be given a try.

“We import RM60 billion of vegetables a year. This project will not only secure our supply of vegetables but would save a lot of foreign exchange,” he added. – April 12, 2021.