Malaysia has not reached food crisis level - MAFI

KUALA LUMPUR: The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries (MAFI) today assured that food supply in the country has not reached crisis level as claimed by some quarters but is still sufficient.

Its deputy secretary-general (Development), Datuk Badrul Hisham Mohd said although there were some hiccups with regard to food supply, particularly chicken and wheat, it had not affected the domestic supply.

"This is because about 94 per cent of the chicken output is for local supply and only six per cent for export.

"Overall, this country produces around 54 million chickens per month and the production capacity is able to meet the domestic need," he said while being a guest on Bernama TV's 'Koresponden Bernama' programme titled, 'Food Crisis: What is MAFI's Assurance for National Food Security?', today.

He also said that about 72 per cent of the overall cost of rearing chickens was for the feed, imported from countries like Brazil and Argentina.

"The corn used for the domestic chicken feed is no longer grown in Malaysia on a big scale and because of this, MAFI is moving towards creating a cornmeal industry in order to solve the problem of importing it," he added.

Badrul Hisham also suggested that palm oil producers allocate a portion of their farm land to grow corn towards reducing the dependency on other countries for cornmeal as chicken feed which was costly.

On the issue of wheat, he said India's decision to ban the export of its wheat had no effect on Malaysia as the main sources of this commodity were countries like Australia and the United States.

He added that India exported only about 1.9 per cent of its wheat to Malaysia while MAFI and the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs were making efforts to solve the supply issue to ensure the people had sufficient food supply.

-- BERNAMA