Sarawak needs 91,000ha of land for wet padi growing to produce enough staple food by 2010

THE state needs to produce 463,000 tonnes of padi a year to achieve 100 per cent self-sufficiency in rice by 2015.

Minister of Modernisation of Agriculture Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr George Chan said to achieve this, Sarawak needed 91,000ha of land for wet padi growing.

“This shall comprise 40,000ha of existing traditional wet padi land, 27,000ha of new commercial single-cropping land, and 24,000ha of new commercial double-cropping land,” he told the august house in his winding-up speech yesterday.

He said the original target in the Ninth Malaysia Plan was to achieve 70 per cent self-sufficiency. However, in view of the current concern on the need to ensure food security, that target had now been revised to 100 per cent self-sufficiency level by 2015.

Dr Chan revealed that the state produced 207,600 tonnes of padi which produced 135,000 tonnes of rice as the final product in 2007. This came from 58,000ha of wet padi farms and 58,790ha of hill padi farms.

“This domestic production was only able to meet 53 per cent of the state’s rice requirement,” he pointed out, adding that the state had to import 111,214 tonnes of rice to fulfil the local requirements.

To achieve the target, Dr Chan, who is also Deputy Chief Minister, said his ministry would adopt two-pronged strategies. The first is to develop granary areas for large-scale commercial padi cultivation, and the second, to increase padi productivity in existing small-holder padi farming areas.

He said the ministry would prepare an inventory of selected areas for padi farming and gazette those that were suitable for large-scale padi farming before developing essential drainage and irrigation infrastructure in the granary areas. They would also try to promote and facilitate private sector participation in the large-scale rice production activity.

On increasing productivity in existing 58,000ha of padi farming areas, Dr Chan said his ministry through the Department of Agriculture and related agencies, would improve farm infrastructures to facilitate water management and farm mechanisation.

Also, they would ensure the availability of quality padi seeds for farmers through the establishment of the Seed Production and Processing Centre.

“The centre would focus on producing seeds of proven high-yielding commercial varieties of rice such as MR219, MR220 and MR23,” he said.

And seeds of selected traditional varieties of rice would also be produced to enable farmers to exploit the market for specialty rice, of which Sarawak was famous for, he added. The minister also said that the concept of Padi Mini Estate development would be promoted to enable small-holding farmlands to be centrally-merged to allow greater production efficiency.

Touching on the rising prices of agriculture input like fertilisers, agrochemicals and feedstuff, Dr Chan encouraged farmers to look into practising natural and organic farming.

He said this could mitigate the adverse impact of price increases although they would still receive assistance in the form of farm input under schemes implemented by the various government agencies.

In addition to organic or natural farming practices, he also told farmers to adopt low-cost production packages such as those that were developed by the Agriculture Department for pepper planting.