Food Sovereignity Policy Of Strategic Importance To Malaysia - Minister

MELAKA (Malaysia), Sept 28 (Bernama) -- Food sovereignty, which refers to the rights of a nation to produce her own food and not depend on imported food supplies to feed its population is an important policy for Malaysia to adopt. Malaysia's Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek said the policy was important because if Malaysia was overly dependent on imported food supply, the country would always be at the mercy of foreign countries which may create various impact, particularly in terms of geopolitics. "Not only will we rely on other countries, but this will affect trade balance as well and with less exports and more imports this will affect the value of our currency, and with the fall of currency, imports become more expensive. "Secondly, if we rely on imports of food production inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, animal feed, machinery and equipment, should there be a geopolitic disaster, the country will suffer," he was speaking at a press conference, here Monday. As such the minister said it was important for the government to continue encouraging the people to venture into the agriculture field so as to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on food imports. He said aid initiatives for agriculture, such as fertilizers and subsidies should remain to ensure that food production costs could be controlled and not increase, making it unprofitable to farm. "When the cost of producing food in the country becomes higher than the cost of importing, many will choose to import and eventually no one wants to farm to produce food in the country," he added. Citing an example he said Malaysia currently imports beef from other countries as it was cheaper and this had resulted in less beef production in the country. In fact, Ahmad Shabery said to enable Malaysia to meet 50 per cent of local demand for beef it required a huge investment of US$903.85 million (RM4 billion) to US$1.12 billion (RM5 billion). "We see it as a whole, we want to attract investors into this field and we are discussing with other ministries and looking into various campaigns. We are also looking at ways on how farmers' organisations can assist in increasing food production," he said. --BERNAMA