RAISING public awareness about food security in Malaysia is a matter of national survival, not just agricultural policy.
A robust food system is critical for safeguarding national food security and public health (nutrition), improving livelihoods (farm income and price affordability), maintaining economic and social stability, and ensuring environmental sustainability.
With our country’s high reliance on importing a majority (at least 60%) of its staple food (such as rice, wheat, dairy, and meat), the food price volatility, rising production costs, vulnerability to climate anomalies, the food supply chain disruptions and changing consumer demands and population growth place severe strain on global food systems, impacting local food affordability and availability.
As the sweeping shifts in global food supply and demand have shaken the foundations of how we produce, distribute and consume food, reforming the agrofood sector is vital.
These involve modernising production systems, increasing self-sufficiency targets, and adopting new agritech to secure food supplies.
Key focus areas include expanding high-tech farming, optimising land use, and supporting small-scale operators.
Despite the government’s policy interventions through the National Agrofood Policy 2021-2030 (NAP 2.0) and the National Food Security Policy 2030 to transform the agrofood sector into a modern, high-value, tech-driven industry, the sector’s performance continues to remain suboptimal, resulting in persistent food import dependencies and vulnerabilities in national food security.
This is primarily stemming from structural and systemic constraints that successive plans have yet to fully resolve.
In 2021 to 2025, the broader agrofood sector, comprising livestock, marine fishing and aquaculture, as well as the “other agriculture” subsector (including paddy, vegetables, fruits, food crops and others), grew by a slower compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.2% per annum, accounting for 3.5% of Malaysia’s gross domestic product in 2025.
It is widely acknowledged that the agrofood sector continues to face interconnected trade and production imbalances, the availability of resources (uneven distribution of arable land, longer-term tenure land and financial assistance), fragmented smallholder operations, low technology adoption, environmental issues, and structural factors.
These key structural constraints are high food import bills, low self-sufficiency ratios for major staple foods, lack of manpower, higher cost of production, lack of rural infrastructures and machineries, limited financial assistance, as well as coordination and implementation among agencies. Food imports had grown by a CAGR of 10.3% per annum in 2020 to 2025, to reach RM92.8bil in 2025 (an average of RM69.8bil per year in 2019 to 2024), making up 6.4% of total gross imports.
The food deficit has widened progressively to incur the largest deficit of RM39.3bil in 2024 compared to a deficit of RM17.4bil in 2019 before registering a lower deficit of RM33.9bil in 2025.
In 2024, Malaysia’s Self-Sufficiency Ratio has remained critically low for several key food items, including mutton, beef, ginger, mango, mushroom, chilli, and round cabbage.
Meanwhile, apple, onion, and garlic continued to be largely imported due to cost constraints and agroecological factors. A high 70% of Malaysia’s mutton supply is imported from Australia, while mango, coconut and beef are mainly imported from Thailand, Indonesia and India, respectively.
Policy considerations for a sustainable agrofood sector
In addressing the structural constraints hindering Malaysia’s agrofood sector, the government can consider a set of targeted and implementable measures and initiatives to enhance the food investment and production ecosystem.
These include having better distribution of arable land for food crops, improving the underutilisation of land, strengthening investment incentives, and enhancing technologies’ adoption and productivity outcomes.
Expansion and targeted allocation of arable land for agrofood
Malaysia’s agrofood sector is constrained by both a limited availability of arable land and inefficient or unequal distribution of land among different commodities.
While the country is resource-rich, the sector faces a structural imbalance where nearly 87% of agricultural land is used for commodity crops (like palm oil and rubber), leaving food crops lagging.
Overall, the agrofood-related crops (excluding paddy and industrial crops such as coconut) constituted less than 5% of total planted areas.
While poor soil quality and environmental sensitivities restrict agricultural developments, approximately 16% of Malaysia’s existing gazetted agricultural land is currently sitting idle.
The Department of Agriculture reported that in 2019, there were 90,578 ha of abandoned land in Peninsular Malaysia, marking significant underutilisation of agricultural resources and a missed opportunity for food production.
The government shall continue prioritising the opening up of additional land for agrofood cultivation, including the systematic reuse of vacant and idle agricultural lands, particularly in areas with strong logistics connectivity.
These include allocating 1% of total forest cover, equivalent to 179,300 ha for the Integrated Farming Systems combine modern crop cultivation, livestock rearing, and aquaculture into a single, interconnected ecosystem; introduce a state-level key performance indicator framework to monitor each state’s contribution towards expanding agrofood land and strengthen accountability; and consider releasing 100,000 ha to 200,000 ha annually for crop cultivation, livestock farming, aquaculture, and biotechnology activities.
Land leasing arrangements for ensuring long-term securityInsecure land tenure is a critical bottleneck in the agrofood sector.
The Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL) continues posing a structural constraint to the agrofood sector’s growth, particularly the arable land tenure security and long-term food investment planning.
As the agrofood growers lack guaranteed land security of long tenure, they hesitate to commit to long-term investment, investing in capital-intensive technological infrastructure and mechanisation as well as productivity enhancement.
These constraints made the agrofood growers operate on a smaller scale and less technology-orientated farming. In addition, the lease arrangements, while increasingly adopted as an alternative to the TOL, remain a long-standing challenge in terms of leasing costs and land accessibility.
In terms of land tenure reform, some states have also phased out restrictive short-term farming permits (like the TOL) in favour of longer-term leases (up to between 10 and 21 years) to incentivise long-term investment.
However, the implementation details may vary across districts and the land categories, reflecting the decentralisation nature of land administration in Malaysia.
The growers are requesting longer agricultural land leases of between 30 and 60 years at subsidised or concessionary rates to enhance growers’ confidence in undertaking larger-scale investments in mechanisation and farming infrastructure as well as improve the bankability of agrofood projects by providing greater assurance of long-term returns.
The establishment of Permanent Food Production Parks (TKPM) serves as a dedicated permanent food production zone to support large-scale farming and improve land security for the agrofood producers.
As at early December 2025, a total of 76 TKPM were established, with a total area of 10,568 ha.
However, the implementation constraints of TKPM remain.
Studies and the industry feedback indicated that suboptimal locations of the TKPM sites relative to logistics networks and urban distribution hubs significantly exacerbate post-harvest losses.
This is particularly disruptive to the highly perishable fresh produce such as vegetables and fruits, as delayed transit times degrade quality and reduce market competitiveness, erode profit margins of the agrofood entrepreneurs and dampen overall supply chain efficiency.
Strengthening R&D for agrofood focus areas
The government shall enhance public funding for the agrofood sector’s research and development (R&D), prioritising productivity enhancement and commercially relevant research.
These include seed development, crop improvement programmes, and post-harvest technologies, such as cold chain and storage systems, such as cold chain and storage systems that directly reduce losses and improve efficiency.
Greater emphasis should also be placed on ensuring that R&D outputs are scalable and adoptable by small- and medium-scale producers, rather than remaining at the laboratory or pilot stage.
Strategic utilisation of the GLC land assets
The government-linked companies (GLCs) with underutilised land assets should be encouraged to play a more active role in supporting the national food security objective by leasing suitable land to the agrofood growers and industry players. These public-private partnerships can help unlock idle or underutilised land for productive use.
In return, the government may consider providing targeted incentives or recognition mechanisms to participating GLCs, aligning corporate social responsibility with national development priorities.
The establishment of a National Agrofood Landbank
Develop centralised agrofood landbank registries through coordinated efforts between federal ministries and state land offices to identify, catalogue, and consolidate information on abandoned and underutilised agricultural land.
These lands can then be systematically leased or allocated to the qualified farmers, cooperatives, and private agrofood enterprises for productive agricultural use.
Such a mechanism would improve transparency, reduce land fragmentation issues, and enhance overall land utilisation efficiency in the agrofood sector.
Lee Heng Guie is the executive director of the Socio-Economic Research Centre. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
