Japanese farmers keen to invest in food production in NCER

NAGOYA, July 5 (Bernama) -- Many Japanese farmers are interested to invest in food production in the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER), said MRT Japan Co Ltd (MRT) president Shiro Komura. MRT’s intention to bring in Japanese farmers to invest in NCER forms the second part of its project in the region in collaboration with its partner JPB Asia Pacific Sdn Bhd (JPB) and the Northern Corridor Implementation Agency (NCIA), Shiro said. “This is to ensure a constant supply of quality food to the Japanese market (in Japan and to Japanese consumers outside Japan),” he told Malaysian journalists visiting a fruit and vegetable wholesale market here. On Monday, MRT signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with JPB in Kagoshima to form a joint venture company, MRT Malaysia Sdn Bhd, to operate, manage and market produce from 100 greenhouses to be built by 2015 in Ara Kuda in Malaysian state of Penang using French greenhouse technology. MRT Malaysia Sdn Bhd will be incorporated within a month. Each greenhouse will be manned by a Malaysian farmer entrepreneur trained and supervised by MRT’s agriculture experts using Japanese farming technology. MRT had earlier carried out feasibility studies on factors such as soil, fertilisers and weather in NCER. It plans to produce six types of agriculture products ranging from rock melon, chillies and salads to snappy peas and japanese cucumber from these greenhouses. Komura said MRT has successfully implemented the same arrangement in China for 20 years producing agricultural products only for the Japanese market. In China, the quality of exports from farms have grown to meet the Japanese market but “farm products that do not meet or adhere to Japanese standards will not be exported,” he said. MRT is based in Nagoya, Japan and supplies vegetables and fruits to Japan, Singapore, Thailand, China and the United States. The company supplies high-value and premium products sourced mainly from farmers in Kagoshima in the southernmost prefecture in Khusyu region and from around Nagoya. -- BERNAMA