Neglecting agriculture at a price

While wealthy countries are fashioning out ways of improving their agricultural output with view to avoiding food crisis, ours is all about importing food from countries whose gross domestic product never reached ours. We are blessed with fertile land suitable for a wide variety of seeds which unfortunately lay fallow. This is in contrast to […]

While wealthy countries are fashioning out ways of improving their agricultural output with view to avoiding food crisis, ours is all about importing food from countries whose gross domestic product never reached ours.

We are blessed with fertile land suitable for a wide variety of seeds which unfortunately lay fallow. This is in contrast to the effort of our forefathers who have worked hard towards boosting the sector through active farming during both rainy and dry season.

History is a living witness to the day when Malaysia had to beg for samples of seedlings for use in their country in a pilot programme. And given their seriousness and commitment to the cause of their nations, Malaysia is now one of the leading producers of palm oil in the world, while we still lag behind.

Ours is an unfortunate story, because more than 50 years since independence our political champions are still campaigning with promises to provide fertilizer to our local farmers in rural areas. For God’s sake, where are we heading to?

And the worst part of it is that they are not willing to fulfill such promises, because as soon as they win election, some of them don’t even visit their constituencies until another round of election when they will seek the votes of the electorate.