THERE's something that ails our rice industry. Our policymakers should know that by now, but do they? From the First Malaysia Plan (1MP) to the Third Malaysia Plan, we were promised between 90 and 100 per cent self-sufficiency level (SSL).
This promise was renewed as recently as 2020. But today, we are stuck somewhere in between. To get to the SSL set in the 60s in the 1MP, we need to produce close to 10 tonnes of rice per hectare. Malaysian rice farmers will tell us how they struggle to produce even 5 tonnes per hectare. What went wrong? Well, plenty.
Start with our plans. On paper, our plans give the McKinseys of the world a good run for their money. From the 1MP to the 12th Malaysia Plan, quadrants and charts crowd out the reality faced by the farmers in the rice fields.
To our planners, plans are to be sold to ministers, not struggling smallholders, which almost all Malaysian rice farmers are. They can't be more wrong. First the farmers, then the ministers. Our advice to policymakers is this: before you put pen to paper, set your boots on the soil. Alternatively, we recommend a good read of the late Shahnon Ahmad's classic, Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan (No Harvests But Thorns, in the English translation), set in the rice bowl state of Kedah in the 1960s, a primer on why self-sufficiency is long on promise and short on delivery.
Use of chemical-based fertilisers is the second reason why our SSL is a slipping target. Prolonged use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides causes land degradation. True, there are pests and diseases that need to be controlled, but organic fertilisers can do the job with little to no damage to the soil.
Not that organic fertilisers are hard to come by. An analysis conducted in December last year by Report Ocean, a market research company, quoted by Far Eastern Agriculture, a trade publication, put the value of the market in Southeast Asia at US$722 million. In five years, it is forecast to reach US$1.2 billion.
If Southeast Asian benchmarks can be believed, the grains industry, of which our rice sector is part, uses 40 per cent organic fertilisers. We hope Malaysia is at least a 40-percenter, if not more.
Finally, prices. No, it's not just eggs and cabbages that are being priced out of reach, but also input to padi production. Media reports quoting farmers' association say the cost of input has risen as high as 70 per cent.
From fertilisers to seeds and everything in between, they have gone north many times over. For rice farmers, this is a double whammy. The government sets the price of rice, but not the prices of the input. Malaysia is a land of 12 big granaries, one of which produces 43 per cent of the country's needs. Put them all together and we get just 70 per cent. Last year was a particularly bad year.
We imported 44 per cent, more than the average of 30 per cent. Maybe we eat too much rice. On average, Malaysians eat 74kg of rice per year. Less or more, Malaysia's rice industry remains one with some serious structural problems. Our rice industry has had a bad fall. We need more than a slew of plans to put this "Humpty Dumpty" together again.