Malaysia is On the Verge of a Food Crisis? (read: possible starvation)

During the Hari Raya holidays, I ran into an old friend of mine who works in Bank Negara. We talked over a range of topics seeing that we have not met for quite a long time.

Over the topic of his newly opened coffee house, the conversation took a sharp turn towards the state of Malaysia’s food supply.

He is of the opinion that Malaysia is on the verge of a food crisis. His argument is simple. Over the last 5 years, the price of basic necessities in this country has never gone down. Consistently basic necessities have increased in terms of price even the so-call control items.

By right, the price of food items should have gone down during the 2009 recession because recessions are supposed to neutralize the effects of inflation. But, that didn’t happen. In fact, during the Malaysian recession, our food prices actually went up signalling a big problem with supply. In short, the impending food crisis in Malaysia will be due to short supply of food.

He argues that the rise in food prices is the result of years of neglect and deliberate implosion of the agricultural sector from 22 years of Dr Mahathir rule. He knows for a fact that Dr Mahathir has never liked the agriculture sector.

Mahathir appointed Sanusi Junid as the longest serving Agriculture minister in history when everybody knows Sanusi Junid’s career is littered with failures.  The appointment of Sanusi Junid ensured the regression of our algriculture sector.

(NOTE: Ever knew what happened to Sanusi Junid’s campaign to get people to drink koko?)

Massive areas of fertile lands was turned into housing areas, manufacturing free trade zones, office building blocks and not to mention white elephant projects.

In addition, fertile lands were also used to grow commodity crops like Oil Palm. Thus, resulting in shrinking domestic production of food items like rice, vegetables etc.

As a result, Malaysia which is blessed with large swathes of fertile lands turned into a food importing nation. We import every single item that we eat from rice, beef, vegetables, fruits and many more.

In fact, the only meat that Malaysia exports is pig meat. Yes, Malaysia is a pig meat exporting country. Congratulations.

So, when the world oil price increased by leaps and bounds, the cost of importing food items increased also.

Compounded with the problem of Malaysian average wage stagnation, average household spending on food increased as well eating up more of an average household disposable income.

In short, thanks to Dr Mahathir and his short sightedness (and not to mention his utter ignorance on how to run a country’s economy), Malaysians now have to spend at least three times what they use to spend on food just to get the same amount of food they use to get.

We should commend the Menteri Besar of Kedah, YAB Ustaz Azizan Abdul Razak for instantly cancelling the Merapoh Oil Refinery project that was planned to be built over 4200 acres of fertile paddy field. The project was, of course, approved by the then Barisan Nasional government exhibiting their complete disregard to the state of food supply in this country.

In short, our problem with food prices can be summed up as follows:

a.       BN’s preoccupation with development spending has totally stunted our country’s agriculture sector NOTE: More opportunity for corruption in development spending as compared to agriculture. 
b.      BN’s liking of commodity crops is understandable because only large corporations benefits from commodity crops. The average people benefits very little from it

c.       Malaysia becoming a food importing country makes holders of import permits for food items can become instant millionaires. They can manipulate prices in the market. Import permits are at the sole discretion of UMNO dan BArisan Nasional

d.      With our wages being stagnant for the last 15 years or so,  the rise in food prices has made
average Malaysians poorer and more depressed

e.       If we want to continue with our food prices being expensive and more expensive, we should continue supporting UMNO dan Barisan Nasional.

TULANG BESI