SARAWAK, buoyed by the success of its trial planting of a “new hybrid” padi variety, believes it could be the country’s rice bowl in as little as five years’ time.

Sarawak Premier Abang Johari Openg, after visiting the trial plot, said he was also confident that its imports of the staple grain could also be dramatically cut by as much as 80%.

Currently, the state produces only 34% of its rice needs and imports 66%, mainly from Vietnam and India.

Padiberas Nasional Berhad’s (Bernas) statistics showed that last year, Sarawak imported 145,468 tonnes of rice while its local production was a paltry 83,000 tonnes.

Malaysia, as a whole, is highly dependent on imports to meet its rice needs.

Its local rice production meets only 15% of its needs and has to import 85% from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and India.

The new imported variety, planted on a one hectare trial plot in Lubok Punggor, Gedong, some 50km from Kuching, could be harvested in three months and has a yield of between eight and 10 tonnes, according to the agro firm conducting the trial, Global Farm BioTech.

Gedong is in the constituency of Abang Johari, which bears the same name.

During the visit, the premier said the yield was a huge leap from the 3-5 tonne per hectare from the local variety widely used by the farmers now, and held promise for the state’s food security programme.

With the new variety offering three harvests a year and could even be planted in the off season, it would be the variety that would be planted in the other three areas the state has designated as large-scale rice growing areas – Tanjung Bijat in Sri Aman, Spaoh in Betong and Tanjung Purun in Lundu.

The target is to have about 1,000ha in each of the areas.

Working out a “conservative” hypothetical scenario based on data from the Gedong trial plot, Global Farm Biotech, an agriculture seed developer which is working with the state government, said a harvest 20-24 tonnes of rice could be achieved annually.

“If we have (the state’s target of) 10,000ha of land (for padi planting), we will have 200,000 tonnes of rice a year,” it said.

Sixty per cent of that will be unpolished rice and the rest, broken rice.

As Sarawak’s rice consumption last year was about 250,000 tonnes, both Abang Johari and Global Farm said based on the 10,000ha planted with the high-yield hybrid variety and producing 200,000 tonnes annually, the state could be quite self-sufficient by meeting almost 80% of its needs.

They said if the acreage is more than 10,000ha, the state could even export rice to the peninsula.

That, Abang Johari said, was not an impossible target to reach and he believed it could be reached in “three to five years”.

He said if the high varieties that could offer “multiple” harvests a year are available, the need to have large areas of land for rice cultivation would not be there even though the state has large tracts that could be farmed.

The price of imported white rice was raised by 36% on September 1 as producing countries either scaled back their exports or totally halted exports as part of food security measures to ensure enough food for their own people.

Production in the main traditional exporting countries has dropped due to the Covid-19 pandemic. – October 8, 2023.