By Afix Redzuan
KLANG, July 8 — The Selangor government will gazette several lands for agriculture purposes in the next three months to sustain the country’s food security.
The State Public Amenities, Agricultural Modernisation and Agro-based Industry Committee chairman Izham Hashim said his committee is identifying and collecting information relating to the matter as some of the lands are owned by subsidiaries of the state administration, the Agriculture Department, District and Land Offices, and there are several others that are abandoned.
“Some of the lands have been gazetted but we want to ensure we have enough used for agriculture and are also secured for the future.
“The Covid-19 outbreak, which had resulted in the enforced movement control order (MCO), had taught us that we must give special attention to the agriculture and food industry aside from development,” he told a press conference at the Meru Agriculture Office, here today.
Izham said the land will be sectioned and categorised based on the suitable greeneries to be planted as underlined in the Selangor Agro Transformation Plan (PeTA).
“The state permanent committee on agriculture has identified 12 types of plants that are suitable based on the consumers’ demand as well as those that would be able to drive the local economy. This is also to encourage more youths to venture into agriculture and thus reducing the country’s dependency on imported food,” he said.
Earlier, Izham had presented financial aid for the agriculture sector worth a total of RM385,500 during the recovery movement control order (RMCO) period, which will be disbursed to 948 farmers.
The state government had allocated a total RM1.5 million under its second economic, stimulus package, the Selangor Cares Package 2.0, to help farmers, livestock breeders and fishermen affected by the enforcement of the MCO.
