KUCHING: The food sector will be the main agricultural focus to increase food security in Malaysia.
Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan said the focus will also help the agriculture industry to generate higher income.
“Therefore, one of the important focuses now is to strengthen the food supply chain, improve support and delivery services, improve technological knowledge and skills and further promote compliance with good agricultural standards and practices,” he said.
He said this in his text of speech read out by Deputy Minister of Food Industries, Commodities and Regional Development Datuk Dr Abdul Rahman Ismail at the Transformasi RantaianTani Niaga: Peluang Koperas seminar at a local hotel here, on Sunday (Dec 4).
Awang Tengah said the government will continue to drive modernisation in the agricultural food subsector by taking advantage of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) in accordance with the National Agro-food Policy (NAFP) 2.0.
“This can enhance food security by increasing productivity, generating higher incomes and attracting a younger generation of agricultural entrepreneurs who will add value to agriculture and increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” he said.
He said there are a total of 3,329 cooperatives in Malaysia that carry out agricultural activities.
“However, our country is still dependent on the import of meat, vegetables and fruits which results in a deficit in the trade balance of agricultural food, because we spend more than RM50 billion to import food products,” he added.
Therefore, he said various short– and long-term solutions are being implemented by the government to help the agriculture sector recover.
Awang Tengah was confident that the seminar would be able to give new ideas to the cooperative movement in Sarawak.
“Let’s work together to ensure that the cooperative movement will be the heart of the country’s economic progress,” he said.
