KUALA LUMPUR: The implementation of Agro MADANI sales will help Malaysians deal with rising living costs and boost the incomes of entrepreneurs in the country.
Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (FAMA) director-general Abdul Rashid Bahri said that 5,000 sales have been planned throughout the country this year with a sales value of RM39 million involving 46,000 entrepreneurs.
A total of 6.4 million B40 and M40 households will also enjoy savings of RM11.5 million through the direct sales programme, an Agriculture and Food Security Ministry (KPKM) initiative to tackle rising living costs.
“We help farmers sell and we use (this programme) to reduce living costs through discounts and also offer combo sales that save between 10 to 30 per cent (compared to market prices).
“It’s not only Agro MADANI sales but also sales at farmers’ markets, we bring producers’ products direct to consumers so we reduce the dependence on middlemen,” he told Bernama recently.
The focus of the Agro MADANI sales this year is to ensure the availability of agrofood supply and to offer choices to consumers in obtaining products at affordable prices.
The sales are a rebranding of the Direct From Farm programme implemented by the KPKM through FAMA, the Farmers’ Organisation Authority and the Fisheries Development Authority of Malaysia (LKIM).
Abdul Rashid said FAMA’s two main roles in reducing living costs through strengthening the national agrofood supply were to help producers, farmers and entrepreneurs secure their incomes and to reduce living costs for consumers.
He added that agrofood supply currently, especially fresh produce like vegetables, fish, chicken and eggs was stable compared to a couple of months before.
“The foreign supply scenario, as in the international market, we need to consider the food trade balance, which is still negative, meaning that we still import more than we export.
“When we look at it in detail, most of the things we import are used for domestic production, like corn and soy in animal feed. We need to import these inputs because we can’t mass produce it domestically,” he said, adding that there were also many challenges with the domestic agrofood supply, including an imbalance between supply and demand at any one time.
Such a situation would cause a surplus in supply when input production rose in a short period of time and there was low demand or a price hike if demand exceeded supply.
Abdul Rashid also shared that FAMA was aiming to involve more youth by running marketing programmes such as the Young Agropreneur programme that offered opportunity to youth to be involved in online or physical marketing.
“Physical means they sell in existing FAMA market spaces, including farmers’ markets, permanent markets, MyFarm Outlets and such… We also encourage them to explore online businesses, we have Agro Bazaar Online.
“Actually, we don’t limit it to youth as we will provide everyone free training and they actually join for free. All they need to do is learn from A to Z to sell online,” he said, adding that those who were interested could contact FAM directly at their offices or the FAMA website. – BERNAMA
