PETALING JAYA: Paddy farming is getting a boost under Budget 2026 as part of measures to increase the food security buffer for the most important staple in the country’s diet.
This comes at a time when the development expenditure allocation to the agriculture sector has been drastically reduced to RM551mil under Budget 2026, or an 81.3% drop from RM2.94bil under Budget 2025.
Touting the allocation to the farmers as defending their “fate”, the government proposed an allocation of RM2.62bil for various subsidies and assistance such as rice price subsidies, rice crop subsidies, fertiliser subsidies, seed subsidies, and rice production incentives.
Under Budget 2025, the allocation was RM2.6bil and Budget 2024, it was RM2.46bil.
The various aids come on top of an earlier increase in the ploughing and pesticide incentives. The ploughing incentive was increased to RM160 from RM100, and the pesticide incentive saw an increase to RM300 from RM200, per ha per season.
These incentives were announced earlier, including the RM50 per ha per season rice harvesting incentive.
However, while the government has good intentions to support these farmers, the mechanism to disburse these aids and incentives need to be strengthened.
A 40-year-old rice farmer from Sungei Besar, Selangor, a rice-growing area of the state, has not received the ploughing incentive as well as the seed incentive for the August-to-September sowing season.
Usually, delaying sowing with maturing seeds would reduce the harvest quantity.
“How are we going to make a profit if harvests are reduced?” he asked, adding that farmers often faced delays or the slow processing of the aid and incentive dispersal.
According to the finance minister, at the tabling of Budget 2026, each farmer receives an estimated assistance of RM4,300 per ha per season from RM3,790 previously.
To increase rice harvests, the second phase of the Five-Season Two-Year Rice Cultivation programme in the Muda Agricultural Development Authority areas of Kedah and Perlis would be completed in stages up to the second quarter of 2030.
As part of this programme, the RM1.28bil Jeniang Water Transfer project would start next year. Besides these projects, another RM100mil would be allocated for the restoration of problematic rice fields, improvement of infrastructure as well as the adoption of modern technology.
A further RM20mil of fertiliser would be disbursed to 6,400 farmers to increase rice yields.
