Back To The Roots

For the last couple of decades or so, Ahmad Farid Jaafar has watched with disappointment and no small measure of sadness how agriculture has declined as a sector of the economy.
While manufacturing and services go from strength to strength, agriculture has long stopped being considered an "engine of growth" for the country, and therefore not overly deserving of vast resources being devoted to its development.
Hence farms have increasingly given way to factories and golf courses, and farmers' children have moved into housing estates and got jobs in offices and on shop floors.
Even the country's only agricultural university, set up in 1972, has changed its name from Universiti Pertanian Malaysia to Universiti Putra Malaysia.
So when the Ministry of Agriculture was recently renamed as the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry to mark a renewed government emphasis on the sector, Farid was excited.
Farid, 40, had written to Nuance and introduced himself as "a vegetable farmer in Raub". That he belongs to a new breed of Malaysians who are working "with" the land - well-educated individuals who choose to live the Malay adage tak rugi berbudi kepada tanah - was immediately clear from his impeccable English, and the fact that he contacted the magazine (on a different matter) via e-mail.
Subsequent correspondences yielded an invitation to visit his "vegetable plot" in Kampung Lepar, 11km outside the former gold mining town of Raub; and revealed that he is a commerce graduate from Australia's University of New South Wales.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's move to make agriculture a mainstay sector once again could not have come at a better time, according to Farid.
It is one thing to note that the agriculture sector was the third largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) last year, and quite another to see that it actually accounted for only 8.431 per cent of the GDP, compared with services' 56.36 per cent and manufacturing's 30.09 per cent.
This was an erosion from between 15 and 20 per cent 20 years earlier, while the country's food import bill has ballooned to as high as RM13 billion a year, compared to exports of only about RM7 billion.
Still, at a volume of RM19.453 billion last year, the sector's total output was a creditable 5.5 per cent increase over RM18.438 billion in 2002.
Farid did not go into farming blindly. He did his research and then about 10 months ago converted 1ha-odd area from the 4ha piece of land he inherited from his grandmother into a vegetable farm.
He invested RM50,000 in the project, the bulk of which went to fencing up the area to keep wild animals out, with monkeys and wild boars being the main pests. He bought seeds from a shop in Rawang, employed two foreign workers to help him.
The plot at the Raub-Benta trunk road is planted with chillies, lady's fingers, long beans and angle loofah (petola), which he supplies to the weekly market in Raub.
Some friends have suggested that he plant fruit trees. Maybe later, he's decided, as the gestation period for that kind of venture can be quite long.
"I was with some accounting firms before, and also worked with my former civil servant father who opened his own construction business. And I dabbled in several businesses myself until I found this," Farid says.
He had come to meet me and photographer May in Raub in a 30-something-year-old red Mini.
"My grandmother left me the piece of land. I had to decide what to do with it. So I did some research, visited some vegetable farms and became convinced that there is money to be made from this."
It was a big decision, given that he wouldn't have had much problem landing a high-flying job in the city.
As explanation for exchanging a plush air-conditioned office with the heat and toil of farm life, this father of three simply said: "I like getting my hands dirty, I enjoy being in the open. Furthermore, it is a business. Whatever I have learned in university can be applied here".
When in school, he had aspired to be a pilot, Farid says, but that was not to be as he wore glasses. Who will doubt his vision now, when he says he sees farmers in Malaysia becoming increasingly well educated, and will adopt modern methods to help bring the agriculture sector to greater heights?
"You have to look at how to maximise utilisation of the land - mechanisation, proper planting techniques, etc. With support from government departments and other support agencies like Fama (Federal Agricultural Marketing Agency), we can make it."
Government agencies have a big role to play, not least in research and development activities, and in the dissemination of information on the latest technologies and techniques in agriculture, Farid adds.
"Of course, the farmers or would-be farmers must themselves be prepared to face the challenges of modern, commercial farming.
"Everybody involved must recognise the demands of the market, and for a start, government agencies have to understand that no programme can be successful if from the point of view of farmers, the activity is not worthwhile, that the returns are not sufficient.
"Only when this is achieved, when the farmers are convinced, will there be the spillover effects, the flow of all the other benefits to society and country."
He is expecting a visit from government officials later in the day: "They've asked to see the operations". Hopefully, he will be able to help put things in a proper perspective for them.
A 1ha plot is fairly comfortable operation for a small family but Farid wants to show that the activity can be undertaken on a larger scale.
He has plans to expand his venture, in terms of plot size as well as crop diversification, meaning going into high-value produce like lettuce and broccoli.
Farid has also started talks with owners of the land adjoining his, and as production increases he has entered into a marketing contract with Fama.
"I need a minimum 20kg per crop and I can sell it to Fama ex-farm price. Fama will market it at the wholesale markets."
The insecticide-free vegetables are ready to be harvested within two months of planting.
"We have not found any need to use insecticide so far. Our problem is actually pests like monkeys. The fence does not keep them out.
"We use firecrackers to scare them off. We've contacted the Department of Wildlife but they suggested that we deal with it ourselves, maybe trap the animals."
As for manpower, two workers are sufficient for now, but when he expands his plot to 6ha, he will need an additional six foreign workers, and he has submitted the application for them to the Immigration Department.
"There is a lot of idle land in the area. The problem is clearing up the area. It is a lot of hard work," says Farid, whose own plot is surrounded by such unutilised land, which is overgrown with jungle-like vegetation.
"It's all private land... with owners. Over there, it's owned by a former high-ranking government official," he says, pointing across the chili field to the rear of the farm.
Farid's venture is also a breakthrough in one other aspect. Vegetable farming is traditionally pursued largely by the Chinese in Malaysia.
Malays in the rural areas, meanwhile, are mostly rubber and oil palm smallholders, and also padi farmers.
Their population seems to be declining as youths leave the villages and family land for jobs in the cities.
Farid hopes that more Malays will follow his example and return to their roots. He now calls Kampung Dong, 4km away from the farm, his home. "The house was my grandmother's too. I live there now with my wife, Azlena Mohd Zain, 37, and two of my children, son Azfar, 7, and daughter Atirah, 5."
Eldest daughter, 10-year-old Farah, lives with her maternal grandmother in Kuala Lumpur.
In between tending the land, Farid does freelance accounting work for friends who own businesses.
The remaining land he inherited from his grandmother is a durian orchard.
"It flowering now. Come back soon and we can have a durian feast," he offers.
For the time being, as a parting gift, he fills plastic bags full of long beans and ladies' fingers for us to take home, and says: "Last night, we had ladies fingers cooked in asam pedas for dinner. It was awesome!"