I welcome Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s tabling of the 13th Malaysia Plan (RMK-13) in Parliament, in which the agricultural sector is prioritized as one of Malaysia’s crucial sectors over the next five years. The plan focuses on strengthening the country’s Self-Sufficiency Ratio (SSR), improving food supply chain to reduce import dependency, as well as recognising agriculture as the most important sector for achieving food security and ensuring sustainability.
Farmers Struggling as Vegetable Prices Remain Depressed
On the ground, the real situation is worrying. In Cameron Highlands, vegetable prices have remained depressed since the start of the year. Common produce such as cucumbers and cabbages are being bought at farm-gate prices as low as RM0.50 to RM0.60 per kilogram, and could be even lower at times. Such prices are far below the basic cost of farmers’ production. At such unsustainably low prices, many farmers can barely break even, while small-scale farmers face severe losses.
If this situation persists without effective remedies, the agricultural sector will struggle to remain sustainable. This not only threatens the livelihoods of small and medium-scale farmers but also discourages younger generations from entering the industry, pushing Malaysia’s food self-sufficiency targets even further out of reach.
Although the vegetable market operates within a free-market system, where prices fluctuate due to factors such as production, weather, land use, transport, and demand, government intervention is needed in certain circumstances. While direct intervention is not always easy and excessive interference may distort the market, the government must not overlook institutional and structural issues, particularly those related to the volume and mechanism of vegetable imports.
Excessive Vegetable Imports Stand Out as a Possible Root Cause of Depressed Prices
Based on data provided by the Trading Economics website, Malaysia’s vegetable imports from China have surged significantly in recent years. The import value stood at USD 550 million in 2022, rose to USD 647 million in 2023, and skyrocketed to USD 882 million in 2024, which shows an alarming 36.3% increase within a single year.
Logically, domestic demand could not have increased so dramatically within such a short time frame. Hence, this unusual spike in vegetable imports warrants serious review and scrutiny by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) and the government to determine whether excessive imports are indeed causing depressed local market prices.
While Malaysia has yet to achieve full self-sufficiency in overall vegetable production, data provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security from 2018 to 2022 shows that some key vegetables have already reached or exceeded 100% SSR, including cucumbers (110.6%), spinach (109.6%), tomatoes (118%), eggplants (106.6%), and long beans (106.6%). In this context, the uncontrolled inflow of imported vegetables, regardless of type, inevitably risks distorting the supply-demand balance, creating oversupply in the market, driving down farm-gate prices, and severely undermining the livelihoods of local farmers.
In the short term, imports may indeed provide consumers with cheaper vegetables and help to fulfil market demand. However, in the long run, such an unregulated model risks severely damaging the local agricultural ecosystem. Continued losses will drive farmers out of the sector, eventually collapsing domestic production capacity. Ultimately, this will undermine the nation’s food security goals, making it a self-defeating strategy.
Call for Review of Import Mechanism and Strengthened Support to Reduce Farming Costs
I therefore urge the government and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to conduct a comprehensive food security review and re-examine the current vegetable import mechanism. In particular, more targeted import controls and quotas should be implemented for crop categories where the SSR are already close to or above 100%, in order to prevent oversupply and protect the interests of local producers.
At the same time, the government must urgently address farmers’ escalating production costs, including fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, labour, and transportation by introducing institutional measures to ease their burden. The Ministry of Agriculture should consider providing subsidies for fertilizers and pesticides to small and medium-scale farmers, thereby reducing production costs, strengthening competitiveness and resilience, and ensuring the continuity of domestic food production.
Federal–State Consensus and Cooperation are Essential to Improve Farmers’ Land Rights
When officiating the National Farmers, Breeders, and Fishermen’s Day (HPPNK), Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim rightly emphasized the importance of stronger coordination between federal and state governments, as well as relevant agencies, in advancing agriculture. This is highly pertinent, as agricultural challenges are not confined to the federal level alone. Land matters, in particular, fall entirely under the jurisdiction of state governments.
Therefore, both federal and state governments have to strengthen cooperation in agriculture through the “whole-of-government” approach, with a particular focus on reaching consensus to secure farmers’ land tenure and reform land policies across states.
For example, in Cameron Highlands, farmers were granted five-year agricultural land leases beginning in 2020, which are a huge improvement compared to the previous Temporary Occupation Licenses (TOLs). However, a five-year lease remains short and creates significant uncertainties for farmers who depend on land for their livelihoods. Without long-term land security, farmers cannot confidently invest in modern farming infrastructure or adopt new technologies, making industry-wide upgrading difficult, let alone the full realisation of smart farming.
Only by guaranteeing land security and protecting farmers’ livelihoods can Malaysia effectively steer its agriculture towards sustainable development and successfully achieve the strategic objectives outlined in the 13th Malaysia Plan, particularly reducing dependency on imports and strengthening food self-sufficiency.