Saya rasa tak lengkap cerita Perladangan Kontrak ni jika saya tak letak laporan-laporan lama saya mengenai rancangan Malaysia hanya beberapa tahun lalu nak mengembangkan sektor pertanian.
Biar jadi peringatan buat kita semua juga. Kita syiok makan tanpa kisah mana datangnya makanan kita, sehingga harga dah melambung, baru terkejut berok!
Ini Bahagian 1 dan Bah. 2 tentang Contract Farming.
Idea mengembangkan pertanian ni dimulakan Dr Mahathir di hujung era beliau jadi PM, sekitar 2000-2003 (beliau turun takhta pada Okt 31, 2003), lalu disambung oleh PM Abdullah.
Tetapi apabila Dr M dah marah dengan Pak Lah, beliau menjadi sinis terhadap rancangan mempesatkan sektor ini.
Dalam siri ceramah Dr M menyerang Pak Lah di seluruh Malaysia - sayalah yang kepo mengekori beliau di KL, Johor (dua kali), Kedah, Terengganu, Kelantan, sehingga saya pun kena serang pepper spray sama waktu dengan Dr M.
Dalam satu ceramahnya itu (di Alor Setar atau JB), beliau ditanya rancangan PM Abdullah dan rancangan 'buku hijau' ini.
Jawapan Dr M (lebih kurang): Berapa banyak kontena sayuran kita kena keluarkan nak beli satu kereta Honda?
Cakap mudah: Idea ini tak bagus jika dibandingkan dengan sektor perkilangan/manufacturing. Kerana nak kena keluaran begitu banyak pun wang yang masuk sedikit saja.
Betul juga. Tapi berapa banyak kilang akan sampai ke kampung-kampung?
Takkan semua orang Melayu di pendalaman nak disuruh kerja dalam kilang.
Bapa kita yang tua nak jadi security guard? Anak dara kita semua jadi minah kilang? Isteri kita semua jadi line leader?
Tanah biar terbiar?
Jika rancangan PM Abdullah hanya nak tanam sayur dan padi, memang bodoh. Tetapi ideanya ialah untuk mengembangkan pertanian sementara terus menarik FDI untuk membuat kilang.
Tapi yang sedih saya lihat juga ialah golongan korporat-politik pula. Mereka hanya ramai yang hanya berharap wang jatuh dari langit (iaitu Putrajaya). Makanan langit tak turun, projek pun mati. Nak marah pun tak apa, saya kata apa yang saya nampak.
Contoh yang saya lihat:
1) Salah satu projek yang dilancar Pak Lah ialah di Batang Berjuntai - di belakang Unisel.
Saya naik teksi ke sana sebab tak tahu jalan.
Di situ, tanah dibuka, jalan sementara dibuat, dan mak oi - ada 'ladang' besar bela lembu dan kambing. Puluhan lembu, ratusan kambing.
Cantik betul tempat tu dibuat, tetapi macam ada tak kena. Saya pun bertanya keliling.
Betullah. Projek tu rupanya BARU SAJA disiapkan sempena lawatan PM.
Patut semua besi nampak masih bersinar, kayu masih bau baru keluar hutan, paku belum berkarat, kambing/lembu semua gemuk.
Yang datang berduyun-duyun orang politik dan korporat. Nak tunjuk sokong Pak Lah (masa tu Dr M sudah memulakan serangan ke atas kepimpinan lembek Pak Lah).
Sebutlah kereta mewah jenis popular di Malaysia, semuanya ada! (Kesian aku naik teksi kena park jauh-jauh dengan orang miskin).
Mungkin saya yang silap - selepas pelancaran tu, tak ada pula terbaca cerita lanjut dari projek lembu Batang Berjuntai ni. Jika ada yang terlibat dalam projek itu, tolong contact saya, saya ikhlas nak buat cerita followup.
Setahu saya, apabila saya ke sana lagi kira-kira dua tahun selepas tu - semasa pilihanraya kecil Ijok (Tan Sri Khalid lawan cikgu bangsa India), tempat tu dah jadi tempat buangan sampah! Pulak.
2) Projek dilancar oleh PM Abdullah juga, di Johor. Terlupa saya di Muar, kalau tak silap.
Wah projek ini ialah untuk menanam pokok-pokok herba nak dieksport. Fuyoh.
Terrornya. Saya lupa detailnya.
Di situ pun, ramai korporat-politik ni muncul, dengan kereta glam masing-masing.
Apabila di interview, ada 'petani' korporat Johor yang berkata kami lepas ni nak bawa masuk lembu beratus-ratus, projek makanan! Biar PM lancar. Wah.
Tapi maaflah. Lepas tu cerita pun lesap.
TETAPI, kadang-kadang yang salah ialah media perdana! Ah kan, aku dah point finger. Saya pun dari media perdana di Temasek Darul SemuaDepaControl.
Kalau ada projek kerajaan seperti ini, janganlah saja buat liputan bila menteri datang. Kerja kamu juga ialah membuat follow-up agar semua orang tahu duit rakyat yang dah keluar tu digunakan secara baik.
Atau disalahgunakan.
Kalau projek diteruskan, bukankah bagus nama kerajaan. Kalau disonglap kamu dedahkan, kan cantik nama akhbar kamu. Ish ish ish.
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Cadangan kecil kepada Pak Najib: Kalau pemesatan pertanian dimasukkan dalam New Economic Model, apa salahnya?
Betullah sebuah kereta Honda tak boleh dibandingkan dengan harga sayuran dan padi lima kontena pun. Tapi bila harga makanan melambung kelak, kau nak makan tayar kereta ke?
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PM Abdullah's First Year in Power
Agriculture: KL's seeds of hope
By REME AHMAD, MALAYSIA BUREAU CHIEF IN KUALA LUMPUR
ST, 30 October 2004
THE Petronas Twin Towers, the city of Putrajaya, a world-class Formula One racing track, Kuala Lumpur International Airport and modern ports.
These projects were among those built in the last 10 years, and is the legacy of retired premier Mahathir Mohamad who wanted the country to think big. But that phase is over.
The administration of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi wants to develop the 'software' to go with Tun Dr Mahathir's impressive array of infrastructure projects.
'He is trying to build the software instead of more hardware - things like integrity, values, ethics. This is because our material achievements have far outstripped these things,' said Mr Mohamed Khairi Isa, chief executive of the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance.
Since taking office, PM Abdullah has also been focusing on agriculture, a sector largely ignored as the country grew to become the 17th biggest trading nation in the world.
Instead of working on small plots planting padi and bananas, or rearing chickens in their backyards, he wants to turn Malays into millionaire farmers.
'Large-scale farming will be promoted. At the same time, more value-added activities such as processing and branding will be promoted to increase agriculture's revenue-earning power,' PM Abdullah said in a major policy speech two months after taking over from Tun Dr Mahathir.
He wants the farmers to think big, along the lines of those in Cameron Highlands who export their vegetables to Singapore. Or Leong Hup Holdings which grew in 40 years from a backyard operation to a major poultry farm, with an output of 2.5 million chickens a month.
For small firms which have been producing Malay cakes, potato chips and curry puffs, he wants them to learn basic advertising and Internet marketing so that their products can reach big cities.
Fishermen who now simply catch fish are slowly being equipped with better boats, and entering classrooms to learn how to make keropok (fish chips) and prawn paste (belacan) to earn extra income.
A senior Cabinet minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, has been tasked to carry out the job as Agriculture and Agro-Based Industries Minister. Focusing on agriculture will not only reduce poverty in rural areas, but would also reduce the food import bill which as expected, hit RM13 billion (S$5.69 billion) last year and which continues to rise.
The government wants Malaysia to be a net exporter of food by 2010.
PM Abdullah's change of focus away from mega projects is also due to another pressing matter: He has to cut spending in order to reduce the Budget deficit that has been there since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Focusing on the rural areas has another big advantage as it will help the very people who support Umno - the rural Malays.
But like everything else that he is planning to do, it is too early to say whether his seeds of hope in agriculture will germinate and grow.
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Malaysia aims to become a net food exporter
(ini cerita awal, tahun 2001)
By REME AHMAD IN KUALA LUMPUR
ST, 26 October 2001
FARMERS are now the priority of the Malaysian government as it strives to cut rising food imports that totalled RM11.4 billion (S$5.5 billion) last year.
The government is trying to change the mind-sets of farmers, investors and the public to think of agriculture as a "cool" sector.
It also wants to turn Malaysia into a net food exporter over the next decade. Food imports are expected to reach a total of RM13 billion next year, about four times the RM3.5 billion worth of food imported in 1985.
Big-thinking farmers like Mr M. Kaliyannan are the type that the government wants to cultivate. He harvests 2,000 tonnes of watermelons a month on his Perak farms, 30 per cent of which are exported to Hongkong and Taiwan.
His 450 ha of leased farmland employs 85 workers and pulls in a monthly revenue of about RM1 million.
"I started on a small scale ... and sold the fruit on the roadside. Later, I became more established as the business grew," the 53-year-old managing director of Melon Master Sdn Bhd told The Straits Times. The ex-farm price of the fruits average 40 sen per kg. They sell on Kuala Lumpur streets for RM2 per kg.
While farming is often seen as a sunset industry carried out by poor villagers, the government wants Malaysians to see it as a growth industry that can be as important as manufacturing, according to Deputy Agriculture Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shariff Omar.
"I would like to state that the perception is clearly wrong," he told an agriculture seminar yesterday. "But the farming efforts must be done commercially, on a large scale and using modern technology."
Local output from agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing totalled RM17.7 billion last year, only a quarter of the RM70 billion output from the manufacturing industry, Finance Ministry data showed.
Datuk Seri Mohd Shariff said high import bills showed that food products had a ready local market.
"Apart from products that cannot be produced in the country due to the climate, two-thirds of the total food imports can be produced locally," he said.
He said the government was not too worried about imports in the 1980s as the economy was booming. But the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis, which depreciated the value of the ringgit, has made food a key sector that must be looked into.
The government has in the past been the main promoter of the agricultural sector, pumping in money into small-scale farming in rural areas.
But today, it wants to get the private sector to put in two-thirds of all investments, or a total of RM21 billion, by 2010. It will pump in another RM11 billion.
"Our hope is that one day, maybe in 2010, we can become net food exporters," Datuk Seri Mohd Shariff told a news conference.
Another new concept, called Ministry of Agriculture Inc, involves government agencies marketing produce in addition to helping with research and crop production.The government showed its continued commitment to the sector by unrolling more goodies in the 2002 Budget unveiled last Friday.
Income tax relief was granted on capital outlay for large-scale farming of vegetables, fish and cockle breeding, and poultry farming in eastern peninsula Malaysia.
Next year's (2002) bill: RM13billion
Malaysia's bill for food imports was worsened by the depreciation of the ringgit during the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis.
With many purchases paid for in US dollars, the ringgit's fall pushed the bill from RM7.7 billion (S$3.7 billion) in 1993 to RM10 billion in 1997.Next year's bill is expected to rise to RM13 billion. - Reme Ahmad
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Raising rural incomes part of duty to help Malays
By REME AHMAD, MALAYSIA BUREAU CHIEF
ST, 22 September 2004
KUALA LUMPUR - Every time he spoke about boosting the agriculture sector, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said, some people around him groaned loudly.
They asked him to talk about the information, communications and technology sector, as well as the high-tech industries, instead of the 'sunset sector'.
But helping farmers and fishermen raise their income is part of Umno's struggle to help Malays, as most of the rural poor are Malays, he told 2,500 Umno leaders who attended a closed-door briefing yesterday.
Some of the leaders who attended the meeting told The Straits Times that Datuk Seri Abdullah told them that while Malays have made huge progress, much more needs to be done for the rural poor.And one way to do this is by modernising agriculture.
'The agriculture sector must be made the third-biggest in the economy after the manufacturing and services sectors,' he told the delegates. 'If we don't help them, this could be the new-age poverty.'
The themes of helping the poor and boosting agriculture were expected to be among the main issues he will focus on in his maiden speech as Umno president tomorrow, party leaders say.
The Premier is also expected to speak about the need for Malays to close ranks at a time when Umno is strong after the big win at the March general election.
'The struggle of the Malays was a focus of his speech as well as the agriculture sector,' said Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Mustapa Mohamed.
Delegates said Datuk Seri Abdullah, mindful of complaints that the government had not been spending enough on major infrastructure projects, told them that it had to scale back spending in order to reduce the budget deficit.
Sambungan di Bah.2
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