Thursday 18 October 2012

Food Security in Malaysia



   Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the staple foods in the world and is an important crop for more than half of the global population. The rice production is predominantly in Asia and this includes Malaysia. Rice production is used directly for food for humans and most of this as boiled white rice. Malaysia is just about 70% self sufficient in rice production and has to import rice to meet the shortfall and this self-sufficiency level is set to increase to 90% in 2010, under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (BERNAS, 2011). This means that we are not self sufficient in producing our own staple food and to overcome this we have to import about 30% to 35% annually from other countries such as Thailand. 

    The worst case scenario that might happen is when the exporting countries cut down or didn’t want to export their rice due to certain circumstances, thus this situation could create havoc in the local market and excessive buying will happen. Therefore, we need to achieve above than the self sufficient level so that we do not cling to other countries for rice and other foods. 


rice research centre in UPM