Why is Food Security Important in Sabah's Context ?

Sabah, situated on Northern Borneo, Malaysia is one of the larger island in the world. Being an island, there are challenges of connectivity with the outside world, it is limited to air-borne and sea-borne. On the road, there is only connectivity within the island.

Food Security addresses the issues of having sufficient food for the people to continue their living. It is the basic food requirement for the land to function in the area of agriculture, industry, health and tourism. In every area, there is a unique food requirement.

Sabah imports a total of RM1.3 Billion food products in 2012 and it is a Billion affair. This is a very high amount compared to the GDP of the state, against what we can produce.

Here are the reasons why Food Security is important in Sabah's context :-

1. Being on an island will mean that we are relying on air and sea transport to bring food in and out of our state. There is a high dependence on transportation to bring food to us. This increases the cost of our imported food. In some cases, the air-flown produce costing is mostly in the airfare. 
2. Although Borneo is the third largest island in the world and we have a huge natural resources on the island, majority of the land are Forest Reserve hence, the connectivity on the island is poor. Even between Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak, the proposed Trans-Borneo road is not done. The remoteness of the places on Broneo has even created different food cultures even though we are on the same island.
3. Importing RM1.3 billion a year for food makes us vulnerable and any broken linkage in this food supply such as disaster in the original countries will result in no supply. Take the example of the Japanese's earthquake in 2014, as a result of that, many resources were in great shortage, plants in Japan have been destroyed, within days, we have to find food supply from other countries. 
4. Sabah's biggest strength is in her Natural Resources and abundance in land, with proper management, the land can produce more food and greater harvests. It can produce the right kind of food that we need. There should be food center to allow food bank to be set up to avoid wastage. 
5. Down Stream processing will ensure that our raw materials are being processed and be available as food item to our people. Currently, a lot of our raw materials are exported to Peninsular Malaysia to be processed in the manufacturing plants there and then exports back to Sabah as food items. This is wastage in terms of opportunity loss for our people and land and also increase the cost of food. 
6. The issue of Carbotage is also impacting Sabah greatly, there are countries who are nearly to us and if all food import must enter a single national port namely Port Klang, then this just raise the cost of food for us here. Just take the example of imported Yoghart, in Peninsular Malaysia it is sold as RM1.40 per small pack. In Sabah, it is  RM 2.50 or more per pack. By simple deduction, RM1 is for air or sea transport alone. Considering how much yoghart we consume in Sabah, if all have to come from Port Klang, we have increased the cost of yoghart so much !

Date : 16 July 2015

Original Total Words : 563 words