PUTRAJAYA, Jan 22 ― The onus is on state governments to protected land gazetted for agriculture, Datuk Salahuddin Ayub said today.

The agricultural minister said this was in light of Malaysia’s increasing dependency on rice imports.

Malaysia import around one million tonnes of rice mainly from neighbours Vietnam and Thailand to fulfill the country’s requirements, which stands at three million metric tons per year.

“To ensure these agricultural lands are not commercialised it’s not just the duty of the MOA,” said Salahuddin this morning, referring to the Ministry of Agriculture.

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He said this after giving his new year’s speech to ministry staff at Wisma Tani, Putrajaya.

“I’ve brought this matter up many times at the National Land Council (MTN) as the lands rights belong to the states. It’s up to them to make a decision on how to use said land and I’ve asked them to take initiatives to gazette the lands used for agriculture now as purely for these purposes or it’ll get smaller and smaller.

“There however are states that have gazetted new lands for agricultural purposes and we welcome this with open arms,” he added.

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In his address this morning, Salahuddin outlined five key areas the MOA are looking to strengthen which are modernising and increasing the agricultural output of paddy fields and fisheries to ensure supply and price stability, involve more of the private sector in commercial and export farming, make farming profitable by increasing activities for farmers, fishermen and breeders and last but not least create a strong organisational structure to improve administration.

 “There is a need to improve our organisational structure to ensure the people who need help the most get it,” said Salahuddin.

“Apart from government subsidies, we’d like to modernise our approach to agriculture produce across the board by using modern technology, soil profiling, using the right fertilisers and many more methods to reduce our import levels and increase local output.”

To a question on the progress of de-monopolising Padiberas Nasional Bhd (Bernas), Salahuddin said they will not rush into making decisions as Bernas will see and end to it’s concession in 2021. By then they would have a plan in place.