Federal subsidy to benefit 61,000 families in Sarawak and 15,000 in Sabah, says minister



Manyin (left) explains to Ismail Sabri how the padi mill works.

KUCHING: The federal government is allocating RM70 million for the hill padi farm subsidy programme for Sarawak and Sabah.

In disclosing this, Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, said the programme was meant to support hill padi farmers in the two states.

According to him, the subsidy would benefit 61,000 families in Sarawak and 15,000 families in Sabah covering an area of about 71,000 hectares.

“With the subsidy, the ministry (Agriculture and Agro-based) is targeting to increase to three metric tonnes per hectare the hill padi production compared to 743 kg per hectare previously,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

Earlier, he launched a fertilizer and weedicide subsidy scheme for hill padi for Sarawak and Sabah at Kampung Gahat Mawang, near Serian.

Under the scheme, farmers were given 200kg of compound fertilizer per hectare, 100 kg of urea (fertilizer), 8 litres of paraquat (weedicide) and three litres and four litres of other brands of weedicide.

In his speech, he said the ministry was allocated RM2.2 billion this year to develop the padi and rice industry in the country.

With the allocation, the ministry hoped to increase hill padi production, hence increasing the income of the farmers, he said.

At the event, Ismail Sabri also launched a hill padi planting technology manual from research conducted by Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Mardi) to increase production.

Minister of Infrastructure Development and Communications Dato Sri Michael Manyin, assistant ministers of agriculture (Research and Marketing) Datuk Mong Dagang and Datuk Sylvester Entri (Farmers Organisations) were also present at the function.