CAMERON HIGHLANDS: Strawberry farmers here seem to have found a novel way to help them prevent the fruits from rotting.
Since their sales have been badly crippled due to the Movement Control Order (MCO), the farmers at Taman Sedia near Tanah Rata here have decided to freeze and store the strawberries which would otherwise have to be thrown away.
In the past, the fruits were in high demand especially during the school holidays and weekends as hordes of tourists will arrive at the highlands to either buy their fruits or pluck the fresh strawberries.
YZ Agro Farm operator Zulkifli Zahari, 60, said he along with seven other farmers in the vicinity had lost their income due to the MCO as there had been no visitors to their farms.
"The fully red-ripe strawberries are ready to be harvested but sadly they cannot be sold. So farmers have to find alternative methods so that the fruits will not just go to waste.
"We have decided to freeze the strawberries and I have stored some 300kg of frozen strawberries. They can be kept up to six months and sold at RM7 a kilogramme compared to the fresh fruits which is sold at RM30 a kilogramme," he said.
Zulkifli said that every year, strawberry farmers would prepare for three harvests in order to meet the growing demand during school holidays where visitors would want to experience picking the fruits themselves.
He said he had planted some 25,000 plants which could produce up to 1,000 kg of strawberries during each harvest season.
He said most of the farmers were now forced to look into producing strawberry-based downstream products so that they would not be forced suffer more losses.
"Although we have always focused on selling fresh fruits, these days my workers will process the fruits into jam, ice cream and cordial juice. We have no customers but we hope that things will improve soon and everyone can return to the highlands," he said.