The potential of Precision Agriculture in enhancing Malaysia’s food security.
According to the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) 2017 report, out of 113 countries, Malaysia’s ranking has dropped to 41 and its GFSI score fell by 3.2 points from 69.4 in 2016 to 66.2 in 2017. Malaysia is now amongst the top 10 countries with the highest drop in GFSI scores.
Earlier this year, Minister of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry, Salahuddin Ayub in an interview with Bloomberg stated that our current rice stockpile can only sustain the nation for 22 days compared to six months in Vietnam and ten months in China.
Datuk Seri Mohamed Shafie Mammal, President of UNI Malaysia Labour Centre attributes Malaysia’s drop in the GFSI score and ranking to deterioration in the index’s “availability” score.
“Although Malaysia has enough poultry, fishery and eggs supply, we are still relying on imports from foreign countries in various food commodities such as rice, fruits, dairy milk, beef and grains.”
Norhashim bin Kamisan, a local agropreneur, expressed concerns over large volumes of chili imports from Vietnam as one of the challenges of marketing locally grown chili. A concern that Salahuddin is well aware of as part of his agenda is to reduce the country’s dependence on food imports and to strengthen food security.
Precision agriculture is a means to help farmers increase their yield, protect the environment and improve the socio-economic status of communities. A customizable smart fertigation system as designed by Atilze Design for the cultivation of simple crops like chili, cucumbers, brinjals is a gateway to increase participation in the agricultural sector as it offers higher yields and lower entry barriers through a fully automated system that costs approximately RM28k per unit presently. However, with economies of scale, the cost per unit can be further reduced with the participation of more farmers.
Smart farming solutions are just the thing to revitalize the urban farming movement to turn gardens, rooftops and balconies into producing food. IoT enabled fertigation systems offer cleaner, simpler and automated farming that doesn’t require large plots of land and soil thus encouraging urban Farmville enthusiasts to embark on growing food.
