KUCHING, March 5 — Singapore’s vertical farming is a very impressive innovation, said Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah.
The Minister of Infrastructure and Port Development pointed out that this modern agriculture is one area that Sarawak can learn from the Republic.
“This innovation makes use of modern technology to control the agriculture environment. This will make it very trendy and attractive especially to the new breed of young educated farmers in urban areas.
“We want to encourage more young people to take up modern agriculture as their profession so that we can increase our production of food and food products,” he said when welcoming Singapore’s High Commissioner to Malaysia Vanu Gopala Menon to his office for a courtesy call yesterday.
Advertisement
On a pertinent matter, Uggah said the state is now focusing on producing more rice, and the Food Industries, Commodities and Regional Development Ministry is targeting a 60 per cent self-sufficiency level in rice production by 2030.
“So rice production is a very important focus of the government. We look forward to using technological solutions like using drones to do the spraying of fertiliser and pesticide besides general monitoring.
“Thus, there is the need to use high yielding hybrid seeds and mechanical harvesters,” he said.
Advertisement
He added when rice farmers can harvest more, their income will also increase.
He said although Sarawak has been declared as a high-income state, there are still people with low or little income.
“So helping them to increase their income is also very important to the government.” Uggah added. — The Borneo Post
