AGEING farmers and outmoded farming techniques are among the current challenges facing the Malaysian agriculture sector.

Agriculture and Food Industries (Mafi) official Perumal Ponnusamy said climate change and lack of green research and development are the other challenges.

“On the challenge of climate change, the National Water Research Institute of Malaysia estimates that by the year 2030, the temperature in Malaysia would have increased by 0.6 to 1-degree Celsius.

“This, coupled with the rise in rainfall and sea level, will affect the production of food and the ecosystem.

“Moreover, research and development efforts in agriculture and climate change are still low,” he said on a webinar on food security yesterday organised by Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) and Bait Al Amanah 

He said the ministry will overcome these challenges with the adoption of modern technology, farm optimisation, new farming models for productivity and revival and upgrading of food parks.

Perumal said the agro-food sector remains resilient and even managed a 1% growth last year.

“This is despite the national GDP being at its lowest at -17.1% which is worse than during the (1998) Asian Financial Crisis ( -11.2%) and the (2008) global food price crisis (1.4%),” he said.

He said the ministry plans to expand production capacity in the 12th Malaysian Plan.

He said food production must increase by 1% each year to match the annual population growth rate of 1.1%.

Malaysia is importing more food than it exports.

Growing hunger

Associate professor Dr Shri Dewi Applanaidu on the webinar said the nation’s trade deficit has grown in the last several years.

The head of UUM’s Sustainable Agriculture and Food Research Unit  said, “The nation is importing around RM18 billion yearly and this trade deficit is getting bitter.”

She said local food production is not growing fast enough while productivity has stagnated for most crops.

Mozambique’s Food and Agriculture Organization representative Hernani Coelho da Silva said the world is not on track to achieve zero hunger by 2030.

A preliminary assessment suggests the Covid-19 pandemic may have added between 83 and 132 million people to the number of undernourished in the world in 2020.

“This is depending on the economic growth scenario with losses ranging from 4.9 to 10 percentage points in global GDP growth,” he said.

In 2020, Malaysia ranked 43rd among 113 countries on the Global Food Security Index. It was eighth among Asia-Pacific countries.

Malaysia scored “very good” (86) in affordability, “good” in quality and safety (72), “moderate” in availability (59) and “moderate” in natural resources and resilience (48). – June 23, 2021.