Malaysia is increasingly importing food and is not even self-sufficient in basic food staples like rice, fruit, and vegetables. Apparently, import of food products has risen from RM1 billion in 1990 to RM13 billion in 2013. This partly due to a significant growth in the population, but there are other factors contributing, as well. There has been a shift among some segments of the population to eating more Western food away from the Asian staples. The government’s focus on industrialisation rather than agriculture has also had a negative impact on food production.
Malaysia now aims to become selfsufficient in rice production, but faces some obstacles. These include the current practice of subsidising rice prices, limited investment in research and development expenditure, and the increased demand for land for other uses than paddy farming. There are some who question whether becoming self-sufficient is even possible. Malaysia also has only a small percentage of its crop area used for growing rice compared with neighbouring Thailand, which has a much greater percentage of land devoted to growing rice and is in fact a net exporter of the product.
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