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THE 10th ISLAMIC BANKING, ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2022
(iBAF 2022)
Overcoming Food Securities Issue in Malaysia (Extended Abstract)
Mohd Nazri Mohd Noor, Muhammad Ridhwan Ab. Aziz and Hisham Sabri
Fakulti Ekonomi dan Muamalat, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), Bandar Baru Nilai, 71800 Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia
Tel: +606 798 6386 E-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author)
1. INTRODUCTION
Within 10 years, the cumulative cost of the country's food imports is RM482.8 billion or seven times the development allocation in the 2021 budget. Malaysia is now too dependent on imports even though the country is fertile and millions of acres of land are not utilized.
Malaysia imported mutton worth RM879.4 million, mango (RM87.9 million), coconut (RM266.1 million) and beef (RM2.2 billion) in 2020.
More worryingly, coconuts, mangoes, goats and cows can be grown and raised in the country. Coconut is not wine. Malaysia also import coffee, onions, potatoes, squid, fresh milk, round cabbage, chillies, and ginger.
In fact, Malaysia imported rice worth US $ 620 million by 2020, the ninth largest importer in the world in the category of the 10 largest countries, namely Saudi Arabia, China, Iraq, France, and the United States.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that the food price index reached an all-time high in February, up by almost 20 per cent compared with a year ago. In Malaysia, the consumer price index (CPI) increased 2.2 per cent to 125.2 in February this year from 122.5 in the same month of the preceding year, driven mainly by the increase in food inflation.
A food security issue may easily become a national security concern. Malaysia's agricultural sector accounts for only 7% of GDP (2019 statistics), and the country is still unable to be self-sufficient in basic food production due to its small population. In 2019, self-sufficiency rates for rice, vegetables, fruits, cattle, and milk were 63 percent, 44.4 percent, 78.2 percent, 22.3 percent, and 63 percent, respectively. We rely heavily on imports to feed ourselves and our foodstuff import bill hit RM51.4 billion in 2019 compared with RM50.14 billion in 2018.
The strategy to ensure our future food systems is the National Food Policy Action Plan 2021-2025. It emphasises digital transformation to ensure that the industry can fulfil future expectations.
The goal is to create an agro-food sector that is resilient, inclusive, competitive, and sustainable, capable of mitigating and managing food security crises and agro-food value chain disruptions.
Experts have already predicted that last year's "once-in-a-century" floods will become more common as a result of global warming. Flooding in December cost the agro-food sector more than RM67 million in losses. Natural disasters will cost more and have a greater impact on food production.
2. OVERCOMING FOOD SECURITY ISSUES IN MALAYSIA
• Fast Action is needed to overcome the shortage of Food Crisis in Malaysia.
Qatar is an odd country from whom we might learn about food self-sufficiency. As one of the world's most water-stressed countries, it can teach us a lot about the relationship between food security and national security.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt established an air and naval blockade on Qatar on June 5, 2017, reportedly because of Doha's support for terrorism.
Qatar's food supply lines were essentially strangled overnight by its Gulf neighbours, yet the blockade, which was intended to "punish" Doha, had the opposite effect. It pushed Qatar further away from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), resulting in a more independent country that has spent the last five years upgrading its food and resource security.
Qatar imported roughly 40% of its products and services through Saudi Arabia prior to the blockade. All of its fresh fruits and vegetables were imported as well, but the blockade drove it to accelerate its efforts to
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diversify its economy. The country — remarkably — is now self-sufficient in dairy when it once relied on imports for 72 per cent of its supplies. A company called Baladna is now one of the largest cattle farms in the region.
It began with 4,000 dairy cows in 2017 and now houses over 20,000 cows in special "cool" shelters. To supply a diverse range of dairy products, cows are milked daily using the most sophisticated rotary milking method.
The farm is available to the public, and schools are given tours of the milking parlours.
Baladna began exporting its products to Afghanistan, Yemen, and Oman two years after it was founded. The enterprise, which was born out of a blockade, meant that Qatar went from being reliant on dairy imports to being completely self-sufficient in milk.
International commerce and logistics, local self-sufficiency, strategic stocks, local markets and supply chains, and research and development are the five primary pillars of Qatar's National Food Security Strategy (2018- 23).
Vegetable production climbed from 66,000 tonnes in 2018 to almost 103,000 tonnes in 2019, representing a 41% self-sufficiency rate, with the goal of reaching 70% self-sufficiency in 2023.
• Imposing More Tax Against Imported Food
Japanese government imposed extra levis against imported rice to secure local farmers. It in contrast to Malaysian government practice where they are allowing the entry of imported rice and eventually killed local farmers.
• Replacing Old farmers with Young Farmers Generation
The government has to encourage young generation to get involve in farming industries by giving more grants and subsidies. A person that owned an economic scale of land, should be given priority to develop their land with agriculture. In Europe and America the agricultural sector is given large subsidies to ensure food security.
The area of agricultural land in Malaysia is shrinking and no one knows the real estimate.
• Implementing Ihya’ al Mawat Concept
The word al-Ih.ya– literally means recovering or reviving land by putting fence surrounding it, or cultivating and developing on it. Al-Mawa–t refers to it as a thing that has no spirit or soul, or land that has no possessor or it also can be defined as an idle land without any development on it. Caliph Omar took back undeveloped land after three years the ownership of the land. Hence, new act must be designed which allow the government to take back undeveloped land. This action is important to ensure that Malaysian land has been utilised for productivity agriculture or development, rather than remain as an idle land.
3. CONCLUSION
Indeed, Malaysia is on the verge of food security if there is no effort to reduce or stop imports, create a new generation of farmers, maintain the size of agriculture and encourage production despite the small size of land using modern methods.
Malaysia is still far from being self-sufficient in basic foods. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries' (MAFI) Agrofood Statistics 2019, Malaysia's self-sufficiency level for main food commodities such as rice, vegetables, fruits, beef, and liquid milk was 63 percent, 44.4 percent, 78.2 percent, 22.3 percent, and 63 percent in 2019.
Only chicken meat, poultry eggs, food fish, and pig were reported to be self-sufficient in excess of 90%.
Malaysia heavily relies on imported food to bridge the gap between domestic supply and domestic consumption.
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References
Muhamamd Ridhwan Abd. Aziz, “Agriculture and Its Contribution from Islamic Perspective, Jurnal Teknologi, 50(E) Jun 2009: 69–86 © Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Zanirah Mustafa @ Busu, Siti Fatimah Tasir, Noraini Junoh, Nor Hidayah Zakaria, The Etiquettes of Agriculture In Islam, Journal Of Contemporary Social Science Research, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
New Straits Times Press, https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2021/08/721438/achieving-food-security-malaysia.
Utusan Malaysia, https://www.utusan.com.my/commentary/apabila-makanan-habis/.
New Straits Times Press, https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2022/04/785343/food-security-matter-national- security#:~:text=MALAYSIA%20is%20a%20food%2Dinsecure,food%20security%20index%20(GFSI).
