21 Disember 2012

Hari kiamat yang diramal dalam kalendar Tamadun Maya jatuh pada hari ini, 21 Disember 2012. Namun, jika tamadun ini begitu bijak, mengapa mereka sendiri yang pupus?

Print screen Facebook rasmi Prof. Madya Dato' Dr Mohd Asri Zainal Abidin

Kiamat adalah rahsia Allah SWT dan hari tersebut pasti akan tiba. Malah, salah satu rukun iman ialah percaya pada hari pembalasan (kiamat). Para saintis di seluruh dunia juga menafikan tarikh kiamat yang disebut oleh kalender Tamadun Maya.

Govt urged to think hard about food security

Two organisations criticise Budget 2013 for not addressing the issue adequately.

PETALING JAYA: Budget 2013 reflects the government’s unwillingness to address the issue of food security in its totality, according to the Southeast Asia Council for Food Security and Fair Trade (Seacon) and the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association (Fomca).

Both told FMT that the announcements in last Friday’s budget presentation showed a lack of concern over the possibility of a global food crisis. Fomca CEO Paul Selvaraj said the budget gave too much emphasis on commercial crops and too little on “perhaps more vital areas”.

“A total of RM5.8 billion was allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture, and only about RM105 of this is for actually improving yields of food crops such as rice, vegetables and fruits. About RM432 million—about four times more—is allocated towards improving yields in the palm oil sector.”

Selvaraj said Fomca did not expect Malaysia to escape the threat of a food crisis brought on by climate change.

He noted that food shortage in Africa was worsening and that even developed countries were already facing problems. “They can’t afford to buy food, can’t produce, are facing drought and so on.”

Citing the corn shortage in the United States, which has reduced the supply of cattle feed, he said a drop in yields in developed countries would affect food supply to the rest of the world. “Although the budget mentions an expected output from the increase in paddy acreage, there was no mention of how much it will reduce our dependency on rice imports,” he said. He said a Fomca survey of 36,000 Malaysians in 2009 and 2010 showed that food prices were the top concern.

“For a long time now, we have been under-investing in agriculture,” said. “In many countries, food production would expand in parallel with other industries. We shouldn’t neglect it and we don’t want to learn the hard way, when people can’t even afford to eat.”

Selvaraj criticised the budget allocations for addressing “mostly short term” concerns, saying they would only temporarily offset the financial problems of farmers, fishermen and others engaged in low-income activities. “Subsidies for seeds and fertilisers often benefit distributors and manufacturers, not the farmers,” he said.

Making farmers competitive

Seacon executive director Anni Mitin also criticised the subsidy programmes. “So much in subsidies is given, but these benefit only a number of companies directly.”

She added that there was a need to re-evaluate even those subsidies that would benefit farmers directly.

“When it comes to subsidies, we question how long these can last,” she said. “Why are we not making our farmers more competitive? The government should be more creative.” She suggested that the government start encouraging farmers to acquire training, to support their work with new technologies, and to sell their produce directly to consumers.

“We don’t expect them to be great businessmen, but the market should be open and they should learn to reach consumers.”

Selvaraj welcomed the introduction of the Takaful insurance for smallholders. However, he said the terms and conditions needed to be clear and should cover loss of production or income due to natural disasters.

He also said the decision to continue the AZAM Tani project was a positive one, but added that more youths should be roped in.

He said Fomca had concerns about anti-competitive practices.

“For food to be affordable, there should be competition along the supply chain. If there is manipulation, price fixing, or collusion, then consumers don’t pay the real price. This applies to every level from importers to wholesalers, middlemen, manufacturers,” he said.

He urged the government to make full use of the Anti-Competition Act, which he described as a weapon against these practices.

The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise

Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that

In the early spring this year, US farmers were on their way to planting some 96m acres in corn, the most in 75 years. A warm early spring got the crop off to a great start. Analysts were predicting the largest corn harvest on record.

The United States is the leading producer and exporter of corn, the world's feedgrain. At home, corn accounts for four-fifths of the US grain harvest. Internationally, the US corn crop exceeds China's rice and wheat harvests combined. Among the big three grains – corn, wheat, and rice – corn is now the leader, with production well above that of wheat and nearly double that of rice.

The corn plant is as sensitive as it is productive. Thirsty and fast-growing, it is vulnerable to both extreme heat and drought. At elevated temperatures, the corn plant, which is normally so productive, goes into thermal shock.

As spring turned into summer, the thermometer began to rise across the corn belt. In St Louis, Missouri, in the southern corn belt, the temperature in late June and early July climbed to 100F or higher 10 days in a row. For the past several weeks, the corn belt has been blanketed with dehydrating heat.

Weekly drought maps published by the University of Nebraska show the drought-stricken area spreading across more and more of the country until, by mid-July, it engulfed virtually the entire corn belt. Soil moisture readings in the corn belt are now among the lowest ever recorded.

While temperature, rainfall, and drought serve as indirect indicators of crop growing conditions, each week the US Department of Agriculture releases a report on the actual state of the corn crop. This year the early reports were promising. On 21 May, 77% of the US corn crop was rated as good to excellent. The following week the share of the crop in this category dropped to 72%. Over the next eight weeks, it dropped to 26%, one of the lowest ratings on record. The other 74% is rated very poor to fair. And the crop is still deteriorating.

Over a span of weeks, we have seen how the more extreme weather events that come with climate change can affect food security. Since the beginning of June, corn prices have increased by nearly one half, reaching an all-time high on 19 July.

Although the world was hoping for a good US harvest to replenish dangerously low grain stocks, this is no longer on the cards. World carryover stocks of grain will fall further at the end of this crop year, making the food situation even more precarious. Food prices, already elevated, will follow the price of corn upward, quite possibly to record highs.

Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself. We saw early signs of the unraveling in 2008 following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As world food prices climbed, exporting countries began restricting grain exports to keep their domestic food prices down. In response, governments of importing countries panicked. Some of them turned to buying or leasing land in other countries on which to produce food for themselves.

Welcome to the new geopolitics of food scarcity. As food supplies tighten, we are moving into a new food era, one in which it is every country for itself.

The world is in serious trouble on the food front. But there is little evidence that political leaders have yet grasped the magnitude of what is happening. The progress in reducing hunger in recent decades has been reversed. Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that.

Time is running out. The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage – replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability– than most people realise.

• Lester R. Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, due to be published in October

Market fundamental and commodity speculation

Food prices and food insecurity are front page news. Price volatility in food and commodity markets – a marked phenomenon in recent years that has undermined food security – and its causes, including the role of speculation in commodities futures markets. While the impact of increased speculation on prices is still debated, the risks of the formation of price bubbles and the exclusion of commercial players, because of higher costs of participation in a deregulated commodity futures market. Mark Bittman includes this in his news items - "Evidence is growing that financial speculators are responsible for the rising price of food. So the Commodity Futures Trading Commission just released new rules to curb excessive speculation, and the result is — you guessed it — a giveaway to speculators."

When food prices rise, some blame investors. Last year, the German news magazine Der Spiegel published an in-depth article, called Speculating with Lives, looking at what’s driving up food prices. The authors argue that while some of the factors we hear a lot about, such as global warming, biofuels and population growth, are small contributors to rising food prices, they aren’t the main culprit. Instead, the article points a finger at investors who have increasingly fled the financial markets and started trading in commodities such as silver, gold and, yes, food.

New IATP Report Shows Excessive Speculation Hurts Farmers and Increases Hunger By Kim Kido – A recent report published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) describes how and why speculative trading has caused agricultural commodity prices to fluctuate wildly, irrespective of actual supply and demand. The report shows how such price fluctuations negatively impact farmers and consumers, and supports regulations that would stop this from happening.

Foreword from Excessive Speculation in Agriculture Commodities, Dr. Steve Suppan wrote;

"Orthodox agricultural economists denied that the commodity price bubble was due to anything but fundamentals, and both Wall Street and LaSalle Street gleefully cited their work. David Frenk, former financial analyst and now executive director at Better Markets, Inc., eviscerated such denialist work, published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development just before the U.S. Senate voted on what would become the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Frenk’s work is reprinted here, as is an excerpt from the testimony of Professor Michael Greenberger to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Greenberger, a former CFTC commissioner, explains important regulatory tools that the CFTC can use to prevent the excessive speculation that induces price hikes and volatility.

IATP began in the midst of a U.S. farm mortgage foreclosure crisis, due in great part to prices—below cost of production—that agribusinesses paid to farmers and ranchers for the raw materials of food products. Even when aided by U.S. taxpayer subsidies, prices were so low that many farmers could not afford to re-pay loans to buy land that they were advised to buy “to get big or get out” of farming. Crops, livestock, meat and dairy products exported at below the cost of production drove farmers in other countries out of business. In 1995, following the founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO), IATP began a decade of nearly annual reporting on the percentage of U.S. export prices for row crops dumped on international markets, i.e., sold at below the cost of production. Although dumping is a patently unfair trade practice under WTO law, the WTO did nothing to stop it.

Now WTO negotiations are dead in the water and agricultural commodity prices are high, though not so high relative to agricultural production costs, over which farmers have little control. Land purchase prices and rental rates, and the cost of seeds, diesel fuel and, above all, fertilizer, have increased sharply, partly due to hikes in oil and gas futures prices. But the dominant trade policy discourse no longer is about subsidies and dumping. Instead it is about commodity price volatility and securing raw materials, agricultural, metals and energy commodities, by any means necessary, with trade as just one option. The unvarnished truth of what an UNCTAD economist said to me in 2004 has sunk in more deeply: “I don’t know why you spend so much time on trade policy when the financial system is such a mess.”

The next stage in the fight against excessive and purely financial speculation in commodity markets is perhaps the most important. Rules based on analysis of comprehensive trade data and sound legal reasoning to make markets fair are prerequisite to good enforcement that can manage the price volatility that results from supply, demand and other fundamental factors."

Since all grain commodity futures contracts which are bought must also be sold, speculation should not cause more than short term price changes although it might contribute to volatility. The non-linearity between price and grain inventories during perceived times of scarcity might be the reason that some jump to the conclusion that speculators are causing rapid price rises during these time periods of real or perceived scarcity. However, the regulatory to help protect the food commodities from speculation is counter productive.

According to Kay McDonald, the recent history of grain markets supports two conclusions. First, the price spikes of 2008 and more recently are not as unusual as many discussions imply. Second, the balance between consumption, available supply, and stocks seems to be as relevant for our understanding of these markets as it was decades ago.

Any sign for a price drop?

Proboscis monkey and orang utan declining

Proboscis monkey declining
Continued destruction of riparian forests for planting oil palm is cause – director 

KINABATANGAN: Sabah’s proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) population is declining due to habitat loss as riparian forests are continually destroyed to plant oil palm and mangrove areas reclaimed for development.

“The proboscis monkey or Monyet Belanda in Malay as they are commonly known, is declining in numbers because we have oil palm plantation planting all the way down to the river edge and in area closer to towns we have seen their habitat loss as the mangrove areas they occupy reclaimed and built upon,” stated a very concerned director of the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), Dr. Laurentius Ambu, in a press statement yesterday.

 To make matters worse, only an estimated 15 percent are living within protected areas, which means preventing the conversion of non-protected areas is crucial. “The oil palm industry does not have to plant all the way down to the river edge. They should leave the riparian forest with the buffer of preferably one kilometer for wildlife and also as a measure to protect our waterways as the water is also ultimately used for human consumption,” said the director.

Sabah, noted Laurentius, has given much for oil palm production and nowit is time for the industry to give back by planting riparian area in particular.

“The State Government is committed to reforestation and we are working closely with community groups, NGOs and even private companies but the oil palm industry on the whole has been very slow to replant riparian areas although they talk a lot of it,” said Laurentius.

The director also vented his frustration at seeing areas that are unsuitable for oil palm plantation due to semi annual flooding being planted with the crop then destroyed by floods.

“These marginalised lands which you see in the Lower Kinabatangan, particularly those close or adjacent to Lots 3 and 6 of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, should be replanted by the oil palm companies with native species of trees that survive this flooding instead of just being abandoned and the soil washing out into the river during flooding,” he said.

These series of pictures clearly highlight the fact that these land areas were not suitable for conversion to oil palm. Note, the difference between the flooded oil palm plantation areas and the forest with native trees. This clearly illustrates that oil palm should not be planted here and the land should be replanted back into native forest.-Photo credit HUTAN/Marc Ancrenaz.


The SWD estimates that there are only 6,000 proboscis monkeys left, with five viable populations in Sabah.

“We have one population in the West Coast, one in the South and three in the East Coast, including the Lower Kinabatangan where oil palm has had a dramatic effect on a variety of Sabah wildlife, including this large nosed monkey,” shared Laurentius.

Monitoring carried out by a non-governmental organisation, HUTAN – Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Programme (KOCP) from 2008 to 2010 along a 15-kilometer stretch within the Lower Kinabatangan, has found that the area was losing 10 percent of the proboscis monkey population every year. A similar declining pattern has been observed in the vicinity of SWD’s Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC).

“The findings of HUTAN ¨C KOCP and DGFC show that within even a small stretch riparian forest when small areas are converted, there is a direct effect on the population of proboscis monkeys present there, and we need to address this issue,” said the director.

Conversion of small patches of forest for mainly oil palm within the Lower Kinabatangan has also resulted in the decline of the orang-utan population there. Without these small patches of forest, wildlife is unable to disperse and mate nor have access to adequate food sources at times.

“This is why we have been continuously pushing for forest corridors, particularly along the riparian areas. They are crucial not just for primates but all wildlife, especially in the Lower Kinabatangan, which is heavily broken up between protected areas and non-protected areas,” said Laurentius.

The proboscis monkey, noted the director, is at direct risk when riparian areas are lost as they are mainly confined to riversides within swamp, mangrove and lowland forest. “These same forest types are also the most threatened not only in Sabah but within the whole of Borneo, which is the only place they are found in the wild,” he said.

The SWD has been working with NGOs such as HUTAN – KOCP and also has DGFC closely monitoring wildlife within the Lower Kinabatangan area for the past 13 years providing ample scientific evidence on the current state of wildlife in this area.

“The only way to stop this decline and to ensure the survival of the eco-tourism industry that also benefits local community, is to stop all forest conversions even if it is a small area and continue with the various tree planting projects that have been on going,” stated the director.

 Like orang-utans, the proboscis monkey has also been listed as being endangered since 2000 in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The Red List also puts the figure for proboscis monkeys in Sarawak at 1,000 individuals. This means besides being the stronghold of the Malaysian orang-utan population, Sabah is also the stronghold for the proboscis monkey population as well.

 Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2011/12/06/proboscis-monkey-declining/#ixzz1ga0hZSV1

Food security policy may be extended

The STAR - Food security policy may be extended

(Saturday April 9, 2011)

By HANIM ADNAN
 nem@thestar.com.my

FOOD security in Malaysia is poised to become more stable and secure with the Government's commitment to possibly extend the expired National Food Security Policy (FSP) and also implement the fourth National Agricultural Policy (NAP 4) this year.

The FSP (2008-2010) was introduced at the height of the global food crisis with prices of food-based crops like wheat soaring by 130%, rice 74% and soybean 87% as a result of supply shortage due to climate change on the back of strong demand from the growing world population.

Under the policy, RM5.6bil was allocated for agriculture development in FSP with defined strategies focusing firstly on increasing the production of rice (see table)

The focus on Malaysia's rice sector can be seen from NAP 1 (1984-1991), NAP 2 (1992-2010) and the revised NAP 3 (1998-2010) with food security being the thrust of the policy for the sector.

It is vital for Malaysia to incorporate a food reserve system or food bank ANNI MITIN (left)

The success of new NAP from 2011 to 2020 therefore will determine whether Malaysia will be food secured through self-sufficiency or import-dependent for daily meals taking into consideration the targeted high-income population.

This prolonged policy is then translated into a prominent objective to attain a reasonable self-sufficiency level (SSL) in rice which has been used as an index to food security in the country.

The SSL was targeted at a comfortable level of 65% in NAP 3, but was required to be at 86% by end of the Mid-Term Review of the 9th Malaysian Plan (2006-2010) in order to fit its production-centric vision of self-sufficiency level in most commodities for reducing deficit in trade balance.

Most of the efforts are carried out via a comprehensive set of market interventions in the form of input and output subsidies, production programmes, guaranteed minimum price for paddy, paddy price support and other production-based incentives.

For this year despite the expiry of FSP, the Government has decided to continue with the incentives for farmers under the national FSP to ensure “sufficient food supply at all times”.

An estimated RM2.77bil was allocated for management expenditure, of which RM1.54bil would be for increasing paddy output, whereby farmers would be provided assistance.

The assistance is in the form of fertiliser subsidy (RM409mil), padi price subsidy (RM480mil), padi seed subsidy (RM85mil), padi production incentive (RM150mil), padi yield subsidy (RM80mil) and rice price subsidy (RM167mil).

An additional allocation of RM400mil for the padi sector is needed to ensure supply would not be affected by unpredictable weather conditions.

Southeast Asia Council for Food Security and Fair Trade (Seacon) executive director Anni Mitin (pic) says there are a lot of food insecurity issues not being thoroughly addressed under the National FSP, like accessibility issues and acceptability concerns such as food safety, nutrient values and food production technology, in light of the climate change and rising cost of production due to high external input dependency.

She says Malaysia should look at its national food security interest far beyond production and stockpiling of rice. “Rice is only one of Malaysia's staple food. What about meat, fish, vegetable, fruits and other grains?”

In Malaysia, she claims that only rice farmers under Muda Agriculture Development Authority and Kemubu Agriculture Development Authority schemes are well-taken care off by the Government instead of ensuring all agriculture-based farmers are given a sense of guarantee in terms of increasing their income.

Anni says Malaysia also has the capability to take its vegetables and fruits cultivation into the next level. So far, the country has been successful, being self-sufficient in chicken and eggs.

Malaysia currently is a net importer of food, importing about RM13bil worth of food annually.

While some economists say Malaysia does not really need to be self-sufficient in food items, this thinking is only good if the population mass has good income to buy the goods, says Anni.

“As it is right now, there are the hardcore poor with household income of RM400 and even the urban poor with household income below RM1,500 still cannot afford to buy food as prices are rising,” explains Anni.

She says Malaysia need to broaden the scope of its existing FSP and NAP along the line of the Asean Integrated Food Security Framework and the Strategic Plan of Action on Food Security in the region. (see table)

“It is vital for Malaysia to incorporate a food reserve system or food bank, and also an integrated information system on the food value chain.

Anni says it is unfortunate that vegetable and fruit farmers in Malaysia still do not have specific pricing mechanism i.e. farm gate prices for their goods, unlike industrial commodities like cocoa, pepper, rubber and palm oil which have agencies looking after their respective pricing.

Fama's role

The role of Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (Fama) needs to be strengthened, not only to encourage stable production but also increase demand for Malaysian produce especially in the domestic market to reflect Malaysian food sovereignty. LPP must also play a bigger role to empower farmers.

“For the country's food security to run effectively, there need to be a multi-stakeholders' approach.

“All parties should be involved such as the state governments on land issues, Health Ministry with regard to food safety and nutrition aspects related agencies such as Farmers Organisation Board and Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism Ministry among others,” adds Anni.

Federation of Malaysian Vegetable Growers Association secretary-general Chay Ee Mong says recently vegetable cultivation in Malaysia holds big prospects given the industry's strength in terms of conducive lowland and highland climate, minimal risks of natural disasters, market opportunity especially with 23% or 184,000 tonnes per year of local vegetables exported to Singapore and the fund for food/incentives given to farmers.

However, on the other hand, since it was free to import vegetables from China, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia, this had made it uncompetitive for local vegetable producers.

Other weaknesses within the industry include shortage of cheap and skilled workers, lack of cold chain facilities, poor packaging and handlings causing about 20% to 30% damages had affected the quality of local vegetables.

Prices also were determined by wholesalers and sometimes through many hands, resulting in a big difference between ex-farm and retail prices, adds Chay.

Malaysia's consumption of vegetable per capita is only 49kg per year, which is very low compared with other developed countries.

He projects the land bank required for self-sufficiency in vegetable at about 30,000ha.

Currently, the total vegetable cultivation area is 38,000ha or 0.61% of the country's total agriculture area.

The country's vegetable production is 800,000 tonnes per year versus the local requirement of about 1.06 million tonnes annually.