Thursday, January 16, 2020

Islamic Assault on Malaysia’s Higher Education



According to a former vice-chancellor who pointed out a list of at least 26 newly appointed vice chancellors and deputy vice chancellors, these appointments were not made on merit but rather on the basis of loyalty to Maszlee and Salafi preacher and Perlis Mufti – Muslim legal expert – Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin. The Salafi movement is a revivalist crusade within Sunni Islam that developed in Egypt in the late 19th century as a response to Western European imperialism.
If Maszlee had more time as minister of education, according to the source, both the ministry and almost every top position in Malaysia’s public universities would have been filled with members of an Islamic NGO dedicated to enhancing Islamic teachings and practices in daily life. The NGO is Pertubuhan Ikram Malaysia, which is committed to promoting the interests of Islam through all aspects of society. Other organizations affiliated with Ikram are said to assist in this cause. Although Ikram has a respectable reputation within the Malaysian community, the leadership has been infiltrated by Salafi sympathizers pushing fringe ideas of Islam.
Ikram strongly opposes Shia Islam, seeing it as deviant. The NGO was also strongly opposed to the participation of two Israeli para-athletes in an international swimming competition last year in Sarawak, forcing the competition to be moved to another country, and objected strongly to the staging of a play, “Sex in Georgetown City” last year at the Performing Arts Center in Penang.
As a result, according to several sources in the country’s public higher education system, the ministry became insular in its outlook to education and dedicated to implementing an agenda that would hinder any diverse outlook from educational perspectives. A recent example was a Universiti Malaysia Perlis Vice Chancellor, Dr Ahmad Badlishah, who said there was nothing wrong with controversial exam questions that caused outrage and calls for his resignation across the nation. The multiple-choice question in the university’s Ethnic Relations paper claimed Zakir Naik, a controversial Islamic preacher and fugitive from India on charges of money laundering, is an Islamic icon and spreading true Islam.
Klang Federal MP Charles Santiago complained that other questions were offensive to the Indian community, including one that reportedly read: “These people are dark-skinned people and they are found in Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia: What nation is this?” The multiple-choice answers were given as “1) Negroid; 2) Red Indian; 3) Indians; 4) Bushman.”
The exposure of these exam questions led to a widespread belief that public universities in Malaysia had become platforms for propaganda and indoctrination, giving the young biased ideas about Islam and society.
Members of Ikram that Maszlee appointed to Malaysian public universities in his short time as minister and the dates of their appointment are:
Maszlee also appointed Mohd Saleh Jaafar deputy director general of Higher Education (Private Institution) and Gauth Jasmon as chairman of the Universiti Putra Malaysia Board of Directors.
All are described as loyal to the Ikram leadership, which also appears to be strongly aligned with the Pakatan Harapan government. Consequently, decisions on matters such as Putrajaya’s failure to sign the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 2018, should be seen in the light that members of Ikram are spread across all aspects of government.
The concern is the reform of the Malaysian education system, not its Islamification. To ensure reform, the sources say, Maszlee’s appointments must be re-vetted as to the suitability to pursue reform within their respective institutions. Otherwise, this Salafist legacy will remain embedded within Malaysian public universities.

Murray Hunter is a Southeast Asia-based development specialist and a frequent contributor to Asia Sentinel.
https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/islamic-assault-malaysia-higher-education



Shared by at 1 comment:

Curing Malaysia’s National Psychosis






With the Year of the Rat approaching on January 25 to be celebrated not by just Malaysia’s Chinese but traditionally the whole country, the vice-principal of SMK Pusat Bandar Puchong 1 school recently demanded that Lunar New Year decorations be removed from the school. 

That is an ominous sign in a polyglot country whose races traditionally have celebrated each other’s holidays. Although in the quite recent past Malays, Chinese, Indians and the other peoples of Malaysia celebrated Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, Christmas and Deepavali together as a symbol of unity, this is now forbidden. 


It fits, however, with other growing attacks on minority religions and cultures. Despite the fact that freedom of worship is enshrined in Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution, that freedom is under threat along with a larger threat against non-Malays.
Although these pressures have been increasing, they are becoming disturbing. A high-ranking Islamic official is arguing Malaysia should be exclusively for the Malays, contrary to the constitution and principles of Islam. The education system is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool to spread racism and distorted views of Islam. The rule of law is not the same for all, where designated people are treated differently by police. 
The themes and arguments within social discussion and outcomes of governance in Malaysia today set the country apart from much of the rest of the world community. Putrajaya’s failure to sign the United Nation’s International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 2018 put it in the company of Dominica, South Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea. Concern is growing that institutionalized racism has put the country in a category with the old South African Apartheid regime, which it once vigorously opposed.
Today, government policy, decision-making, leadership and institutional development are all influenced by forces controlling political outcomes that appear more irrational and dysfunctional as time goes on. The divisive ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) narratives are now implanted deeply into the assumptions and beliefs of the ruling elite’s psyche. Police are using the court system to suppress alternative points of view by banning closed-door meetings of legally registered societies, members of a governing coalition party are arrested on alleged terrorist links to a defunct organization, and the prime minister uses innuendo to threaten sectarian retaliation against a community group.
These beliefs are heavily skewing political decision making. This cognitive dissonance has been destructive upon community relations, nation-building, national culture, and even the Malaysian concept of nationhood itself. 
Thus there is a growing national psychosis that has taken reform off the national agenda, as reform challenges the ruling elites’ view of reality. The reform promised by Pakatan Harapan when it took power in May of 2018 now is feared as an attack on authority, status, prestige, and the very security of those in power, as it was prior to the election on the part of the United Malays National Organization. Those fears are currently projected onto the Democratic Action Party, an ethnic Chinese-dominated member of the ruling coalition.
Symptoms of this psychosis are strewn around the national narrative, which has become an instrument of exclusion, where the roles of groups working towards independence have been largely rewritten to serve the perceptions of the leaders of today. The aspirations of Sabahans, Sarawakians, and Orang Asli (the true indigenous people), have been excluded. 
This was seen in one of the final directives given by the ex-education minister Maszlee Malik before he was sacked for appointing a non-Sarawakian, Kamal Mat Salih, as chairman of the board of directors of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, which has led to criticism and outrage.
As the demand to remove the Lunar New Year decorations shows, today’s narratives are focused on severing empathetic ties between ethnic groups, replacing them with a biased single narrative. Given emphasis on “true Islam” in government schools, more than two generations of Malays now behave according to the beliefs and values incorporated within these narrow vistas of reality. The current national narratives completely fail to encompass any evolving aspirations that promote any semblance of national unity. 
What is missing are any aspirations about the dreams on which the nation was founded. An alternative sense of identity has crept in – divisiveness, exclusion and hate. The country now lives within a psychic prison that is full of illusions about enemies that don’t exist. People are suffering from hallucinations of Jewish plots, Christian plots and Chinese plots.  
In government, the centralization of decision making, often within secretive circumstances indicates fear of scrutiny. This paranoia is displayed in the way ministers attack those who expose their shortcomings. This depressive display of force has been nurtured on the assumption that ‘we are the law’. Within Malay society, ‘Malay unity’ means that all must agree to the views and ideas of the elite. Dissent is considered disloyalty. Challenging the teaching khat, or Muslim calligraphy and Jawi – Arabic script – in schools is akin to an attack on the national language. Those who have alternative views are the enemy.  
Racism and cultural imperialism have become embedded within Malaysian culture to the extent of delusion. It is now ingrained into the psyche. Racism, however, has also become cover for deep corruption arising from discriminatory policies like the New Economic Policy (NEP). The anxiety generated by the ‘lazy Malay’ being raped and plundered by other groups fallacy revived by Mahathir from British colonial times was its justification. 
The ruling elite has always been projected as Malaysia’s savior although this projection is more about resolving intra-Malay political and power rivalries, than inter-racial conflict. It’s all been a convenient fabrication for maintaining power, severely impairing Malaysia maturing as a nation. 
Ketuanan Melayu must be seen for what it really is; a defense mechanism against change. The irony is that it is not protecting and enhancing a rich Malay culture, but rather gutting it to the mercy of some alien tribal desert culture. The imposition of Arabism has destroyed much of the richness in a Malay culture that was once fondly treasured, even by non-Malays. Many traditional Malay traditions and artforms have been discouraged and even banned, under the arbitrary declaration that they are un-Islamic. 
These hardline Islamic policies are taking root throughout government institutions, leading to the belief that the more one takes on the artifacts of Arabism, the better a Muslim he or she will be. Reciting Rukun Negara – Malay national principles – would be much more appropriate than reciting prayers before government events and meetings. 
Curing Malaysia’s national psychosis can only come from reverting to the assumptions, beliefs and values that were around when the nation of Malaysia was created. This means breaking up the fallacies that are hindering the pursuit of nationhood, including that public enterprise can do what private enterprise can’t. This is where the elite have gained their ill-gotten wealth and most state economic development corporations, and their subsidiaries are bedrocks of corruption. 
Malay and other indigenous cultures originated from three distinct sources. Those indigenous to Tanah Melayu (the Malay Peninsula), Sabah and Sarawak, those who migrated to Malaysia from the Nusantara archipelago, and those who migrated to Malaysia while the Sultanates were riverine rather than territorially defined. 
Some of the migrants from outside of Nusantara over the centuries from China and South Asia formed a unique Baba culture that has co-existed with Malay culture for centuries. The new Arabized cultural traits and inwardly politically defined Islamic view of the world have become a fence of exclusion. This is pushing younger Chinese into a China admiration syndrome which holds China’s accomplishments in awe, which China is now clandestinely exploiting for its own advantage. Expect this to become much more pronounced over the next few years. 
Malay culture started to change when the cikgu (teachers) and civil servants were replaced within UMNO by an opportunistic rent-seeking Malay class and when Mahathir and his then-ally, Anwar Ibrahim, Islamized the government and civil service. This was also the time of the birth of crony capitalism which guaranteed the gentry would rule over the rest. The rule of law became we are the law, where police need special permission to interview anyone seen as being a member of the gentry in any investigation.
However, the constructed truths created and manipulated by those in power have always depended upon economic prosperity. The government handed out millions of ringgit to the people, gave out privileges and extended credit. Affluence bought silence, it kept the opposition weak, and enhanced the image of the government as being benevolent. 
Government budgetary and fiscal problems, economic downturn, and rising cost of living are making it much harder for any government to placate the people, as has been done traditionally for decades. It’s going to be much more difficult to buy into power in the future.
None of the present political parties, either alone or in any combination can remedy this national psychosis. Bersatu cabinet members have shown their disdain for transparency, in honoring their pledges, and have been implementing their own agendas. PKR ministers have been enjoying the trappings of office. They are changed people from the days they were in opposition. 
The Malaysian Malaysia dream of Tunku Abdul Rahman is fading away into a Wahabi state with all the tribal trimmings, pushed by the Malay-centric parties on the people.
The only hope for a cure is for intellectuals, activists, writers, lawyers and other professional people, members of royal families, along with ordinary citizens, led by those who once experienced a Malaysian Malaysia to come together to initiate change. 
This doesn’t have to immediately become a political movement, but a diversity of social and cultural organizations that refocus the narratives back to the old Nusantara values, society once cherished. This movement could advocate de-Arabizing the Malay language and returning to Islam Hadhari (today) with its wider universal values. Kampongs need revitalization, where mosques become centers of vocational and community education. Cottage industry can be revitalized to develop local sustainable economies. This would also mean dissolving state economic development corporations and their subsidiary companies that are full of corruption and taking market space away from local entrepreneurs. 
The states need their sovereignty back. They need to campaign for local government and Citizen Development Committee elections, so that as many people as possible can participate in some level of governance. History needs to be taught as it really was. A country without a deep sense of history is a country without a soul.
If such a movement could ever gain momentum, some of the old political partisans from the PKR, DAP, and political forces in Sabah would come onboard. This is not an impossibility. Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit’s Future Forward Party made a successful debut in Thailand’s general election last year, and is very quickly becoming a mass social movement aimed at changing Thailand’s current political paradigm.

Murray Hunter is a Southeast Asia-based development specialist and a frequent contributor to Asia Sentinel.

Shared by at No comments:

Wednesday, December 04, 2019

2019 Environmental Review: Southeast Asia




The year—and the decade—in environmental terms, is coming to its end, with some species and entire ecosystems in their death throes. For starters, Malaysia recently lost its last Sumatran rhino, the poaching of Sabah’s pygmy elephants is rapidly increasing, Australia’s koala bears are being incinerated in wildfires, dugongs are dying in Thailand, Laos has lost all of its tigers, orangutans are being shot up and blinded by bullets, and the Mekong River is being strangled by hydroelectric dams in Laos and China. 
A smorgasbord of rare and spectacular species—and the habitats in which they live—are being erased. Nowhere on Earth can the effects of man’s dominance over the planet be seen with greater clarity than in Southeast Asia. 
There are so many disturbing news reports popping up on so many outlets that it can be overwhelming to try to keep tabs on everything that is happening when it comes to environmental issues. Nonetheless, I have attempted to create linked-soaked summaries on a country-by-country basis consisting largely of small press releases that could have easily slipped by in hopes that a more complete picture could emerge from the dark room of dismal news. We’ll open with one of the countries with some of the most disturbing recent reports, Malaysia. 
Malaysia
Perhaps one of the most symbolic reports concerning wildlife in the 21st Century comes from Malaysia in the death of Imu, the last Sumatran rhinoceros of the country. She died in captivity after having been taken from the jungle for safety from poachers. A long health struggle ensued, with news outlets around the world covering her recent demise. 
But it’s worth asking how we got here. Chinese demand for rhino horn stretches back millennia, with Southeast Asia becoming an easy source after China wiped out its own rhinos. In other words, Sumatran rhinoceros, which are now only found in a few pockets in Sumatra and perhaps in Kalimantan, were hunted out of their jungle redoubts to satisfy superstitious Chinese demand long before wildlife conservation NGOs ever existed. These smallest, hairiest and gentlest of rhinos had been mercilessly persecuted for a long time, and November 2019 was the end of the road for the species in Malaysia. 
Elsewhere in the country, the government voted against protecting sharks in the waters off its coast, baby sharks are being caught and sold en masse in Miri, and pygmy elephant poaching is escalating and in gruesome style with head, feet, and skin being hacked off an animal in Sabah. A Critically Endangered Malayan tiger dizzily wandered into a village, apparently suffering from canine distemper disorder, which is often spread by domestic hunting dogs entering forests with poachers. 
Poachers have their sights set on Sabah’s bantengs, an indigenous Orang Asli was arrested with elephant tusks in Kelantan, and yet authorities are fighting hard to protect Sabah’s Tabin Wildlife Reserve, and the government recently gazetted one million hectares of Sarawak’s ever-dwindling forests as a protected area; however, the ongoing construction of a Pan Borneo Highway across Malaysian Borneo will undo some of this. Finally, the majestic Helmeted Hornbill continues to be relentlessly poached out of existence in the country. 
Indonesia
While the Amazon fires grabbed global headlines, Indonesia’s forest fires have been raging as well, turning key elephant and tiger habitats into plumes of smoke in Sumatra. A journalist who wrote critically of palm oil was found dead in Medan in what was almost certainly murder. 
Elsewhere on the island, the insidious trade in songbirds is making the forests become increasingly silent, while down in South Sumatra province a farmer was attacked and killed by a Critically Endangered Sumatran tiger. The same tiger is said to have stormed into a tourist tent and attacked them in an earlier incident. Up in Aceh in November, a blind orangutan, still alive, was riddled with two dozen bullets, while earlier in the year an orangutan named Hope was found to have 74 bullets in her body. 
Five sea turtles were found dead within two weeks of the opening of a coal-fired power plant in Bengkulu, and Indonesia appears to be backing away from its tough stance against illegal trawlers and foreign poaching vessels. However, a new toad was identified in the Barisan Mountains of Sumatra, and it appears that Kerinci National Park—home to tigers, tapirs and allegedly, the orang pendek or tropical yeti, is getting a reprieve from a spate of road-building. 
A gorgeous new species of honeyeater has been named in Alor Island, while in other good news a dam project has been cancelled in Gunung Leuser National Park in Aceh. Nonetheless, the plan to relocate the Indonesian capital from Java to Borneo will almost certainly result in large-scale environmental destruction.     
Cambodia
Over 60 percent of Cambodians rely on fish for their daily protein, with much of it caught freely in the Mekong River and Tonle Sap Lake, but both of these water sources are in serious trouble, with Tonle Sap fisheries down 50 percent in 2019 and the Mekong at its lowest level in 100 years thanks to a drought and an upriver dam-building bonanza. 
But on a positive note, the Irrawaddy River dolphins on Cambodia’s stretch of the Mekong in Kratie are faring better these days, and wild bantengs—with the help of Wildlife Alliance and a nearby local community—are hanging tough in an isolated patch of forest in Kampong Speu province. However, Kep residents are complaining about the destruction of a nearby mountain that has turned into a stone quarry, triggering a slew of environmental problems. 
Chinese gold miners are poisoning a river in Kratie, and China’s Shenzen Institute has been tasked with creating a development “masterplan” for Sihanoukville, a province has seen an utterly transformative onslaught of Chinese investment. It is difficult to imagine that the strategic position of Sihanoukville on the Cambodian coast was not carefully considered by Beijing, and so rabidly has China shredded the charm of this beach town that the popular travel web site Travelfish as downgraded it to a half-star destination. 
Back in January, I saw a dead slow loris splayed out on a motorbike in Virachey National Park, and a friend of mine recently saw more dead lorises openly for sale in the Ban Lung Market in Ratanakiri. 
Prey Lang forest—Indochina’s largest lowland forest—continues to be hammered by illegal logging, and overall, the Kingdom’s forest cover has shrunk to 47 percent (it was 73 percent in 1975). 
Thailand
Way down south near Koh Libong island in Trang province an endangered and orphaned dugong became an internet sensation among the Thais after a video was released showing the four-month old pup hugging a local vet in the water. The baby dugong later died, having a stomach filled with plastic. Plastic waste in Thai seas and beyond is increasingly turning the oceans into minefields for marine life, and a Thai marine expert put forth proposals for dealing with the plight of the dugongs, which number around 250 in Thai waters. The government hopes to increase that number by 50 in the coming years. Thai fishermen admitted to killing 30 dolphins in Malaysia waters, but over 10 black-tipped reef sharks were recently recorded in Maya Bay of Koh Phi Phi in a sign that efforts to restore the ecosystem in this scenic national park are bearing fruit. 
In other positive news, rare helmet urchins were found in the Similan Islands for the first time in years, while not far away, another rare sea creature—the giant ray—was spotted gliding through the crystal blue waters. Not far from the ray a huge leatherback turtle was spotted laying a clutch of 104 eggs on a Phang Nga beach. On land, Sa Kaeo police busted an illicit wildlife trader attempting to drive a large haul of wild animals—what some are calling a “feast of wildlife”—including turtles, tortoises, and monitor lizards, to Cambodia. 
Vietnam
The rediscovery of the silver-backed chevrotain or “mouse deer” sent excitement through the conservation community, though some wonder whether or not the ancient and critically endangered saola still roams the Annamite Mountains or if it has silently been hunted to extinction; it was last camera-trapped in Vietnam in 2013, and is or was found in Laos as well. On the avian front, Asian openbill storks, black-headed ibises, and other rare birds have been flocking to Back Lieu Bird Garden, while fishermen released a rare turtle back into the sea despite offers from locals to buy and cook it. Back on land, the Vietnam delta is sinking into the sea and action needs to be taken quickly to stop it.   
Laos
The poverty-stricken, landlocked nation lost all its tigers in recent years, while gold mining and dam-building continue to erode the country’s once-rich natural heritage. Tiger farms are still operating in the once-reclusive country, and the Chinese are well on their way to bulldozing a path all the way to Thailand for their high-speed trains, which the majority of Lao people will never use. 
At the very top of Southeast Asia, what remains of the forests of China’s Yunnan province are being hammered for the paper and pulp industry, while over in Myanmar palm oil plantations are encroaching on protected areas in a story all too familiar to the region. Along the eastern border of Burma, the Karen people are working hard towards making the Salween Peace Park a permanent ecological haven for rare species like tigers, leopards, bears. A China-backed dam will flood a Philippine protected area in Luzon, and a snake that hadn’t been seen in Singapore 172 years was recently sighted in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. 
The causes of it all
What is the driving force behind all this? Rising incomes and traditional (unscientific) beliefs in all Southeast Asian countries contribute massively to these issues, as does infrastructure development, which often sees new roads bulldozed into final wildlife frontiers. Having China as a neighbor does not help, as a recent haul of live wildlife shows, and online Chinese message boards facilitate the sales of dead tigers, leopards, helmeted hornbills, elephant skins, and a sad array of other wildlife products. 
There can be no doubt that 2020 will be just about the last chance to try and reverse the gloomy trends mentioned here, and to build on the few bright spots that remain. After all, just as I typed this up, it was reported that yet another rare leatherback sea turtle crawled out of the Andaman Sea at Phang Nga in Thailand and laid another large clutch of eggs. Thai authorities roped off her nesting site and it will be protected. And the koala bears that some news outlets said are “functionally extinct” throughout the entirety of Australia? Not just yet, though their numbers are in decline. Wildlife can bounce back if we let it, jungles can grow back if we let them, the oceans can start to be cleared of plastic if we stop polluting and start cleaning them up. It’s got to happen starting right away, in the new decade.  




Gregory McCann writes on environmental topics in Southeast Asia and is the author of the book Called Away by a Mountain Spirit: Journeys to the Green Corridor. 
AsiaSentinel.com
Shared by at No comments:

Malaysia’s Lagging Agriculture Sector




Malaysia, whose agriculture sector led the economy for decades into the 1970s, is falling behind Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and other regional players like China, Taiwan, and Korea in terms of innovation, technology, know-how and methodology and product and value chain development. 
The country’s long neglect of the sector and narrow focus on plantation crops at the cost of encouraging crop diversity has left the country with serious issues and challenges. Despite the fact that the sector contributes 7.3 percent to national GDP, it employs 1.5 million workers, fully 10 percent of the workforce. 
Agriculture’s dominance of the economy ended in 1981, when then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed’s massive push towards industrialization left the Ministry of Agriculture without sufficient budget to operate the office air-conditioning system fulltime during working hours. While the sector was rejuvenated somewhat by Mahathir’s successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, through massive fund increases, it has never really recovered. 
The plantation sector is operated by primarily government-linked companies (GLCs) and large publicly listed estate companies. Utilizing around 5 million hectares, palm oil production contributed RM40.2 billion to GDP in 2018. The high profitability of palm oil as a crop over the years has deterred the development of alternative crops. 
However, palm oil production in 2018 declined by about 2.5 percent over the year before. In March this year, the European Commission dealt the industry another blow, concluding that palm oil cultivation has caused deforestation and decided that palm oil as a feedstock in European biodiesel will be phased out by 2030. Malaysian plantations are working towards achieving Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification, which requires estates to meet a list of specific environmental standards and workers’ rights before January 1 in an attempt to alleviate EU concerns. 
In addition, there are concerns over health issues with consuming palm oil, which will take a lot of resources on the part of the palm oil lobby to counter. Malaysian palm oil trade to India is also in jeopardy due to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s refusal to allow the extradition of the firebrand fugitive Islamist preacher Zakir Naik back to India, where he faces money laundering charges. 
With the expected decline in world demand for palm oil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia are trying to consume more domestically as biodiesel. However, Malaysia with its diesel subsidies is struggling due to the relatively high cost of palm oil, vs subsidized diesel. Malaysia cannot afford to be complacent over palm oil any longer. It’s a mature market where production is set to decline over the coming years, where alternatives are needed. 
Malaysia is still the world’s 5th largest producer of rubber behind Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Rubber production is almost totally in the hands of 600,000 smallholders. However, with prices drastically depressed due to severely weakened demand from China, reports claim that more than half of Malaysia’s rubber holdings have been abandoned. Even with the Malaysian Rubber Board providing incentive payments to cover lower prices, rubber production has dropped by almost 20 percent in the last year. The rubber industry is set to shrink until demand outstrips supply once again. 
Historically, Malaysia’s rice production has only produced 60-70 percent of the country’s consumption. Approximately 200,000 aging paddy farmers on plots ranging between 1 and 5 hectares cultivate paddy in the country. Paddy farming only produces marginal income, even with the subsidies provided by the government to farmers. Unlike paddy farmers of the past, farmers today usually don’t multi-crop paddy, vegetables, fruits, coconuts, and raise fish, poultry, and livestock. 
Paddy production lacks standardization and doesn’t have Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) or HACCP certification. Often unregistered pesticides are used, leaving chemical residuals. Thus, food safety and traceability are issues. Although Malaysian paddy yields are on a par with Thailand, they are behind Philippine, Indonesian, and Vietnamese yields. 
Farmers mostly don’t own mechanical equipment, so must hire an array of contractors through the production process. Due to Shariah law on inheritance, land holdings continue to be broken up between families, making paddy farming even more difficult. Large belts of idle land, estimated at 119, 273 hectares, can be seen across the country partly due to family land disputes. Farmers have no involvement through the supply chain, so opportunities to add value to rice are non-existent. Under the present paddy farming system, there is no way farmers will be able to improve their incomes. 
The only future for paddy farming to benefit farmers is to develop cooperatives that manage economically viable estates made up of a group of farmers holdings. These cooperatives should be for the benefit of the farmers, run by the farmers, and owned by the farmers. These cooperatives could plant, cultivate, harvest, brand and package value-added products like red and brown rice varieties that have higher market end opportunities. Contract farming initiatives creating paddy estates have shown to reduce costs by 50 percent and increase yields up to 30 percent. 
Other agricultural activities include cocoa production, which in the 1980s looked promising before most plantings were wiped out through disease. Although production is still dwindling, some entrepreneurs are producing boutique beans and developing downstream niche chocolate production. Vegetable and fruit production produce 40 percent and 66 percent of the nation’s needs respectively. Production is gradually increasing with an impetus of new younger farmers, who are trying to make businesses out of their farms. 
However, knowledge, experience, know-how, are still being built up. Soil and environmental conditions are poor in many areas, with nutrient lacking soils, polluted water sources, with chemical contaminants present. The disease has almost wiped out potentially promising niche industries like dragon fruit. Many producers are still nascent to certifications and supply chain management. 
Malaysia currently only produces around 20-25 percent of its beef, goat and mutton requirements. Despite many previous government initiatives to bolster meat production, there is a chronic shortage of grazing land on the peninsula, and in some cases, public abattoir facilities are not certified. Likewise, dairies supply only a fraction of local demand. In contrast, the privately developed and operated poultry industry has been developed as a successful state of the art, fully integrated industry, not only producing all of Malaysia’s poultry needs, but Singapore’s as well.
Smallholders have tended to be minimally educated and are now well into their 60s. Paddy fields, rubber plantations, and dusuns (fruit orchards) have been left idle with no one to take over. This is in contrast to farmers in other countries who take over from their fathers with technical and business degrees and vision. 
Local Malaysian farmers have been indoctrinated by the agricultural backgrounds of their localities and that their land holds limited crop opportunities. They have been scared by scammers who tell them to plant bananas, lemongrass, chili fertigation, agarwood, and teak, only to fail technically or have no buyer once the crop is ready to harvest. Young people don’t want to take over the family farm holding because they want to find better opportunities. 
This is one of the weaknesses of the Ministry of Agriculture and subordinate agencies. These organizations lack the ability to empower the youth of rural communities through outreach and extension. There is also no vision of how integrated communities should be created and developed into multiactivity local-sustainable micro-economies. Malaysia, unlike Thailand, doesn’t have model integrated farms that demonstrate and teach communities how to farm and create cottage industries. 
While Malaysian academics write academic papers with an eye to promotion, their Thai counterparts are in the community helping the people create products, processes, brands, and markets. They enrich community sustainability. This is a prerequisite to develop and expand coconut production and create multiple downstream industries using coconut materials to produce coconut oil, virgin coconut oil, coconut milk, activated carbon, copra, processed coconut products, and even animal feeds. 
The Ministry of Agriculture’s research priorities have been developed by bureaucrats rather than industry. Research priorities need to be focused on the problems and opportunities of today, for current stakeholders. Research has been left to small units at the Malaysia Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI). This would include products like ginger, chili, onion, garlic, cabbage, sweet corn, eggplant, okra, long beans, avocado, asam jawa – tamarind – figs, grapes, mangoes, cashew nuts, and macadamia nuts, etc. 
The successful food processing firm Adabi Consumer Industries is unable to purchase all its needs locally and is forced to import raw materials. Unlike Thailand and Taiwan, little has been done to help communities develop downstream products like dried and canned fruits, processed foods, dairy foods, snacks, ice cream, sausages, pies, and burger patties, etc. Institutes like MARDI may show the minister and media some of these products in exhibitions, but rural communities rarely get to see them, let alone learn how to produce them.
Little is done to create branding paradigms other than the slogan “Malaysia Best.” Sabah and Cameron Tea companies have successfully used geographical branding, halal farming is largely ignored even though the global halal market is growing by double digits. Organic and ethical products hardly exist.  
The Pakatan Harapan government has decided that rather than put effort into meeting the country’s current agricultural challenges the rural community depends on, it will invest time and resources into smart farming. This is an opportunity for consulting and technology companies to make a lot of money, and bureaucrats travel overseas on junkets to smart farming exhibitions at taxpayer expense. 
But smart farming will not revitalize existing farming in the country. It will assist new entrepreneurs with access to expertise and capital to pick up grants and incentives. Smart farming is set to be the next white elephant, just as the biotech initiative was. 
Malaysian agriculture is at a crossroads. The whole sector needs rethinking. People with experience and knowledge of the issues are in the country. Before committing to smart farming, which does have a place in some niches, the potential future directions of the sector need to be discussed openly, so a new thought out direction can be set in Malaysian agriculture. The government needs to work on transforming what already is, help rural communities that are in need, rather than look after its own with one more white elephant.
Shared by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)