chapter 6 - Malaysia Productivity Corporation ( MPC)

Box 8.1: Innovative Farming Practices: “From Ideas to Reality”
Presently, globalisaton, climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, water pollution, and
increasing pressure on natural resources are amongst the most pressing challenges for agriculture.
It plays an important part in both causing harm and offering solutions to meet these challenges.
Under conventional farming practices, there is limited opportunity to reduce emissions
significantly, rather, agriculture is a major contributor to emission, soil erosion and the associated loss of
soil organic carbon, the most meaningful sign of soil productivity. Thus farming practices must be made
to shape agriculture towards innovative and best practices which will meet the above challenges. This
is what we call modern agriculture which pushes for innovation, stewardship and advancement being
continually made by farmers to produce high quality products with a reduced environmental impact.
Agriculture has relied heavily on conventional methods to produce, increase and sustain food production.
There was extensive use of chemical fertilisers to supply plant nutrients and chemicals to combat
pest and diseases. What this calls for is a system of agriculture that involves sustainable management
of natural resources while progressively enhancing soil quality, biodiversity, and productivity. Among
the ideas that has been practiced is Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) which stands on four pillars of
economic viability, environmental sustainability, social acceptability and food safety and quality. This
is in line with globalisation that brings new opportunities for agricultural producers, along with new
challenges to meet growing demands for food safety and quality. Farming practices that are in line
with the GAP include protected environment production system, integrated pest management (IPM),
precision farming, biofertiliser, and biopesticide.
Protected environmental agriculture is to improve nutrient water use efficiency and obtaining better
pest management in crop production for quality produce. It is a sustainable crop production system
incorporating soilless culture and fertigation whereby, the application of fertilisers, soil amendments or
other water soluble products was made through an irrigation system. This allows for precise, minimal,
sustainable quantity of chemical inputs in the production process. The aim is to manipulate the root
environment to generate root signals that play a major role in plant metabolism against root stress, pests,
diseases and other related plant injuries that will disrupt water and nutrient uptake and distribution. It is
expected to become an important agribusiness industry with greater impact on the national economy
than was traditionally perceived due to escalating costs in agricultural inputs. It can have precise control
over the growing environment and avoid wastages, and uncertainties in the water and nutrient status of
the growing media and overcome the problem of salinity, pests and diseases.
Integrated Pest Management is to promote sustainable pest management control. It is a natural way of
suppressing pest population to lower density either permanently or temporarily through the use of the
existing natural enemies of the agricultural crop pests. This could be achieved through the release of
natural enemies or enhance natural enemies densities by improving their shelters.
194 Productivity Report 2011/2012