DEPUTY Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin recently said that if Barisan Nasional is to retain power in the next general election, it needed to win back voters with out-of-the-box initiatives that have the “wow” factor.
“We may have been too cocky and complacent, thinking we were undefeatable, which resulted in the big popular vote loss,” he said (NST, Aug 18).
The Wow Factor project our small group of Malaysian inventors are proposing will unite three separate technologies perfected and tested in prototype with successful commercial projects over the last 15 years. One large town selected from each state will be transformed into a hi-tech agricultural city of about one million inhabitants. It will surround the old town centre, restored to its former glory, with ultra modern “deep tropical” meat and milk production farms and affordable, child safe “honeycomb housing” parks, especially for the generation of young families.
Government bodies, such as the 1Malaysia People’s Housing Programme and Syarikat Perumahan Negara Berhad, that vet genuine homebuyers, can effectively outflank get-rich-quick land and housing speculators who unscrupulously drive up housing cost without adding any value.
The honeycomb housing parks will be built in about half the normal time on state land using the “CKY industrialised building system” based on interlocking load bearing hollow concrete blocks and attractive face bricks that add individuality to each house. The small block and brick-making factory can be located at any sand and cement quarry close to the building site, saving transport costs. A large number of well-paid construction and farming jobs for local youth will be created.
Connecting the agricultural cities to other towns and larger cities, like Kuala Lumpur and Johor Baru, through a network of high-speed rail will gradually reduce the rural-urban divide and enable families to live and work wherever they choose.
Malaysia has never produced even half the food it consumes, and relies dangerously on food imports. Twice in its history, its population suffered starvation. First, during the collapse of the Malacca empire, and second, during the Japanese occupation, which is still within living memory.
With the exception of chickens and pigs and some mechanised rice farming, Malaysian food production is unsatisfactory. The modern chicken and pig farms would collapse in weeks without the grain and concentrate imports to feed these animals
A scientifically sound solution to gaining self-sufficiency foodwise therefore deserves the most serious political attention. Basically, Malaya-Malaysia has been repeating the mistakes for 500 years.
The European grazing system imported by the colonial powers for sheep, goats, cattle and dairy cows is a failure due to a combination of tropical heat, year-round disease load and poor quality breeding animals and grass.
The deep tropical animal production system can overcome these limitations by protecting dairy cows and cattle from the harsh environment in climate-controlled, hygienic barns.
For sheep and goats, hardier and simpler naturally-vented barns with raised metal flooring are sufficient. Under these improved husbandry conditions, the most productive breeds of temperate climate animals in the world, selected during hundreds of years of scientific breeding, are able to prosper in the tropics.
We estimate the agricultural cities could make Malaysia self-sufficient in lamb, beef and milk production in 10 years. Rice and possibly wheat could also be grown in large quantities on flat land adjacent to the deep tropical farms. The highly-mechanised Australian Riverina rice growing system, which yields 12 tonnes of rice per hectare, also looks promising for quickly achieving rice self sufficiency.
The proposed agricultural cities will be food production centres in terms of tonnes of ruminant meat and milk per hectare. The final hurdle has recently been overcome. Developing countries have, at long last, found their own internal source of large-scale development funding — the new BRICS New Development Bank, established by China, Russia, India and all of South America, and now joined by South Africa and Thailand, with other sovereign nations studying the proposal.
Mohd Peter Davis,
Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor