Sustainability of Self Sufficiency of Rice Policy in Malaysia under a Changing Environment

ISBN: 978-981-08-8407-9

Authors: Emmy Farha Alias and Muhammad Tasrif

Abstract:

Malaysia’s stance on food security is largely translated in terms of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production at about 65-70{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} of the local requirement. Since Malaysia does not have the comparative advantage in rice production, it implements a wide range of market interventions to achieve the intended level of rice production. The policy instruments include among others: guaranteed minimum price for paddy, price control, price and input subsidies. The future scenario of paddy production is clouded with weather changes which affect soil fertility and water availability. This paper examines the influence of major intervention instruments (input subsidy and R&D investment) as well as climate change on the country’s effort to achieve self sufficiency in rice. A system dynamics model is applied to analyse the causal and feedback relationships of these variables in the paddy production system framework. The study shows that Malaysia may not be able to sustain the targeted self sufficiency level without adequate R&D to address the production constraints particularly below-optimum productivity and the threats of climate changes. The consumption of rice on the other hand continues to rise due to increase in population.

Keywords: paddy and rice, Malaysia; system dynamics; policy analysis