1. The Role of Agriculture in
Ensuring Food Security:
AvailabiliĽy and SĽabiliĽy
Ľhrough Urban Farming
Adeeba Khairuddin (S2028516)
ZQA7026 Local/International Public Policy Practice
2. Food security refers to the
situation where people, at all
times, have physical, social
and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious
food that meets their dietary
needs and preferences for an
active and healthy life.
According to the Agrofood Statistics
2019 of the Ministry of Agriculture and
Food Industries (MAFI), Malaysia has
not yet reached the level of
self-sufficiency for basic food.
Malaysia is extremely dependent on
imported food, with the annual cost of
food imports exceeding RM50 billion
between 2016-2020. Because of the
high dependence on imported food,
global food inflation will directly
affect the local food prices in
Malaysia, resulting in higher cost of
living for the people.
The Selangor state, especially, is the most populous state with majority
living in urban areas. 2.1 millions of Selangor urban residents are living in
quarters. Food unavailability and instability can cause huge risk to
Selangor consumers as it would mean that the effect that it has is
significantly larger compared to the other states.
Source: FAO, MAFI, DoSM, and Yee (2022)
3. To explore the role of agriculture in strengthening food
security through urban farming in Selangor
Objective:
To assess the implementation and challenges of urban
farming practices
To examine the impact of urban farming to the local
community
Sub-objectives:
4. ● Malaysia is ranked at 39th place with
a score of 70.1 reflecting growth from
the previous year (2021) in the
Global Food Security Index (GFSI).
● The indicators to measure the status
or level of food production of a
country include self-sufficiency ratio
(SSR), per capita consumption
(PCC), the balance of trade (BOT)
and growth domestic price (GDP).
● From the year 2019 to 2020, the
majority of the SSL rate for main
food commodities is decreasing
while the consumptions are
stagnant and increased.
● According to a study conducted by
Khazanah Research Institute, food
expenditure holds the biggest share of
average monthly expenditure by the
majority household income group.
● With the instability of the food supply chain
added to Malaysia’s heavy reliance on
imported food, it can expected for a spike in
food prices.
● Studies has claimed urban agricultural
activities can contribute to the availability
of fresh and healthy food items, a
decrease in food expenditure on food bills,
direct access to a variety of food products,
as well as urban waste recycling, pollution,
and sustainability.
Food availability dimension Expenditure of lower income households
5. ● Urban agriculture is defined as any agricultural activities which grows, raises,
processes and distributes agricultural products regardless of land size and
number of human resources within the cities and towns.
● The Lae City Council took the approach of producing local food and fuel production
to address the rapid urbanization and heavy reliance on imported food throughout
the state. Through local urban agriculture, food supplies are produced through local
allotment gardens as well as agroforestry applicable to the whole city.
International benchmark of Lae City Council: Effective Urban Agriculture
6. Methodology - Qualitative Approach
Phase 1 (Secondary Data)
Desktop Research
1. Secondary Data Collection
2. Secondary Data Analysis
3. Design Interview Question Phase 2 (Primary Data)
Semi-structured Interviews
1. Urban Farms (n=2)
Corroboration of findings and result
7. The Green Streets Urban Farm, Kelana Jaya Urban Farms MY, Petaling Jaya
9. Sub-objective 1:
To assess Ľhe implemenĽaĽion and challenges of urban farming pracĽices
● Efforts of maximising unused land for agricultural
purposes are a part of the strategic planning for
local authorities. For example, under the Selangor
District of Petaling Jaya, due to abundance of odd
shape empty land, the Petaling Jaya City Council is
working on a “smart partnership” with urban
farmers.
● Malaysia, as a whole, the agricultural land in is not
fully utilised for food production, mainly focus on
commodities only such as palm oil. Given that
Malaysia is an agricultural state, more land should
be utilised for local food production purposes.
● Foreign workers recruitment in managing
urban farms is a challenge due to our
current foreign policy. This is especially
with the recent pandemic where there
have been hard pressed for foreign
workers due to the earlier hiring freeze
by the government.
● Hiring local talents has its own struggles
as local talents have low interest in the
agriculture industry.
Theme 1: Agricultural Land Availability Theme 2: Labour in Agriculture
10. Sub-objective 2:
To examine the impact of urban farming to the local community
● The produce of urban
farming differs across
different urban farms.
● What they have in
common is that their
target consumers are
their respective local
community with a
lower selling price
than traditional
supermarket.
Theme 3: Agricultural Trade
● The restriction during the
pandemic has raised the
awareness of food
availability at the local
level.
● These urban farms
become a source of food
produce for many
households that shows
the important of urban
farms in ensuring food
security.
Theme 4: Self sufficient trends
● Given that the location of
most urban farms are
highland, the instances of
flood would not have
impact the farms
physically.
● It would still, however,
impact in running its
operation such as access to
clean water and
accessibility to the farm
itself.
Theme 5: Human Made Disasters
11. The result of this study indicates the
complexity of building and running urban
farms in Malaysia. From obtaining the land,
building the urban farm, to sustaining its
talent, be it foreign or local.
The impact of urban farming are significant to
local community. Produce of urban farms are sell
directly to local community (be it households or
businesses) at a lower selling price benefiting
those in need.
Table 3: Participation in urban farming in Malaysia from 2014 to 2020 (Courtesy of Urban Farming Division,
Department of Agriculture Malaysia cited in Murdad et. Al., 2022).
12. Recommendations:
● Promoting the practices of homegrown production is
crucial as the success of urban agriculture rely on the
collaboration and willingness of every household
● Policies and urban planning that promotes urban
agriculture can act as a catalyst to increase local urban
agriculture practices amongst urban residents.
● The government needs to empower farmers and relevant
stakeholders, incentivise the private sector to embark on
urban farming, and provide other forms of support
through facilitating to increase the portion of food
supplied locally.
13. References
● Central Bank Malaysia (2018) “The Living Wage: Beyond Making Ends Meet”. Retrieved from
https://www.bnm.gov.my/documents/20124/826852/AR+BA4+-+The+Living+Wage+Beyond+Making+Ends+Mee
t.pdf/81ede661-d5b6-9e33-7df3-e2fc89033387?t=1585030026097.
● DoSM (2021) “Supply and Utilization Accounts Selected Agricultural Commodities, Malaysia 2016-2020”.
Retrieved from
https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/cthemeByCat&cat=164&bul_id=cHgwanhNdU4vWXRvc3pnZ
U9xSjZTUT09&menu_id=Z0VTZGU1UHBUT1VJMFlpaXRRR0xpdz09
● FAO, International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, World Food Programme, and World Health
Organization (2017), The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017. Building resilience for peace
and food security.
● FAO Statistics Division (2019). Food Security/Suite of Food Security Indicators.
http://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/indicators/211/en
14. References
● FAO (2015) The Impact of Natural Hazards and Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security and Nutrition. Rome:
Food andAgricultural Organization.
● Kearney (2022) “Transforming Malaysia into a more food-secure nation”. Retrieved from
https://www.kearney.com/consumer-retail/article/-/insights/transforming-malaysia-into-a-more-food-secure-nation
● Lee, Esther (2022) “The State of the Nation: Malaysia’s continuous struggle with foreign labour”. The Edge
Market. Retrieved from
https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/state-nation-malaysias-continuous-struggle-foreign-labour
● MAFI (2021) “Malaysia Performance In GFSI 2021”. Retrieved from https://www.mafi.gov.my/en_US/gfsi-2021
● MAFI (2020) “Foos Security:Availability”. Retrieved from https://www.mafi.gov.my/en_US/ketersediaan
● Martellozzo, F., Landry, J. S., Plouffe, D., Seufert, V., Rowhani, P., & Ramankutty, N. (2014). Urban agriculture: a
global analysis of the space constraint to meet urban vegetable demand. Environmental Research Letters,9(6),
064025.
15. References
● Murdad R, Muhiddin M, Osman WH, Tajidin NE, Haida Z, Awang A, Jalloh MB (2022) Ensuring Urban Food
Security in Malaysia during the COVID-19 Pandemic—Is Urban Farming the Answer? A Review. Sustainability.
14(7):4155. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074155
● Petaling Jaya City Council (2021) Pelan Strategik MBPJ 2021-2025. Retrieved from
http://www.mbpj.gov.my/sites/default/files/web_buku_pelan_strategik_2021-2025_24022021.pdf
● Sundaram et al. (2019) “Achieving Food Security for All”. Retrieved from
https://www.krinstitute.org/assets/contentMS/img/template/editor/Discussion%20Paper_Achieving%20Food%20Security%
20for%20all%20Malaysians.pdf
● The Business Today (2022) . “Malaysia and Our Food Security Conundrum”. Retrieved from https://www.businesstoday.co
m.my/2022/05/21/malaysia-and-our-food-security-conundrum/
● The Ukraine war and threats to food and energy security. Chatham House—InternationalAffairs Think Tank, Benton (2022)
● The World Bank (n.d.) “UrbanAgriculture: Findings From Four City Case Studies”. Retrieved from
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/publication/urban-agriculture-four-city-case-studies
16. References
● Y
eung, Y
ue-man (1987) “Examples of urban agriculture inAsia”. The United Nations University. Food and Nutrition
Bulletim. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/156482658700900212
● Jack Ellis (2021) “Singapore launches $45m agritech fund to boost urban food production”. Retrieved from
https://agfundernews.com/singapore-launches-45m-agritech-fund-to-boost-urban-food-
production#:~:text=The%20Singapo
re%20government%20will%20set,can%20boost%20domestic%20food%20production.
