Day to Moo-Moo's House (Putra Dairy Farm)

December 3, 2015

Our group bonding day at Ladang 16, Plantations Faculty UPM. Started the journey at 8.20am from Putra Food Court (PFC).

We never thought that the journey to the farm from the main road is about 1km , but it was a great journey, walking with our groupmates and also other groupmates who planned to go there on the same day with us. Other than strengthen our bonding, we were also able to know our other coursemates.

First we went to dairy farm, agriculture is classed for the long term production of milk, which then is processed to be dairy products.

Putra Dairy Farm has two breeds of diary cattle, which are Friesian Jersey and Friesian Sahiwal. Each cow has an average lives of 10 years, with 6-8 times of pregnancies throughout the whole life. Putra Dairy Farm uses extensive production system, in which the cows spend the majority of the year outdoors.

In the dairy farm, the workers are responsible to:

know when will the mother cow deliver when she gets pregnant and quickly separate the baby from the mother. The farm is producing dairy products, and they need the milk from the mother cows. Once the mother cow gives birth, inside their breast contains a lot of good and high nutrients milk. To prevent the mother cow only gives out milk during breast-feeding to her baby, they need to separate them. This is due to the fact that the feeling of breast-feeding and taking the milk though the milking equipment is very different. 

                                     

                                                           Calf

                               

                                                Milking Equipment

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The worker in the farm is feeding the baby cow.

The workers use a machine called milking equipment to get the milk for the cows. In this machine also, the process of killing and eliminating bacteria and fats occurs, using the hot water equipped inside the machine.

For each cow, the process takes around 5-7 minutes, and produces averagely 7-9 liter per day. 

The milk squeezing must be carried on everyday, if not the cow might get milk fever.

Since we missed the milk squeezing session, this is an example we got from Youtube.

This is colostrum - milk produced by the mother on the late pregnancy and the few days after giving birth.

Thank you Encik Mafus for the information and opportunities to let us know more about the farm :)

Presentation

This is our video for our presentation on Agricultural Practices in Malaysia. Hope you enjoy watching the informative video. Thank you! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFmJlaGV7Xw

Approaches To Agricultural Development In Malaysia

NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL POLICY


NAP 1




















New agricultural lands were opened with emphasis on export crops, in particular oil palm and cocoa in order to increase foreign exchange, create employment and eradicate poverty.Government invest heavily on:

• infrastructure .
• institutional building.
• new land development for oil palm and cocoa.
• in-situ development to resolve uneconomic farm size and low productivity among small holder

NAP 2

Placed greater emphasis on:

• sustainable agriculture
• expanding food production,
• agro-based industrial development
• greater role of the private sector, biodiversity and conservation

At the international level, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established with rapid liberalization of agricultural trade creating increased competition albeit new market opportunities.

NAP 3

The policy is created to enhance the nation's global competitiveness and to ensure continuous growth of agriculture.There are 2 new strategic approaches are adopted:

• Agroforestry approach in which agriculture and forestry are viewed as an integrated entity, mutually compatible and complementary, thereby providing a scope for joint development
• Product-based approach to enhance the upstream agricultural production and downstream agricultural produce together with nich marketing are implemented. 

Agriculture and the Malaysian Economy

CONTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURE TO THE GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT(GDP)

Agriculture is a part of the primary sector in Malaysian economy which contributes to the gross domestic product (GDP) over time. The contribution of agriculture to GDP has decreased since 1970.

The production capacity is low due to the limited technology and disorganised farm management practices. However, the development programmes which is guided by the National Agricultural Policy(NAP) are aimed to expand the food production to improve the food trade balance, increase the export of primary commodities, and ensure the supply of raw materials for local downstream industries.

FOOD COMMODITIES

 

The implementation of the third National Agricultural Policy (NAP 3) to meet the national food requirements as well as broaden the export capacity of the agriculture sector have positive impacts on food production.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN AGRICULTURE

The agricultural sector contributes significantly to the country in earning foreign exchange through exports. Malaysia exports oil palm, rubber, fatty acid complexes, palm kernel oil, various food preparations, sugar and cocoa butter. However, Malaysia also import food from other country. Among the major import items are maize, sugar, wheat, rice, soybean, and various food preparations. 

AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT

According to table above, employed persons in agriculture sector decreased from 1990 until 2010 and in 2012, there is 16017000 persons employed in agriculture sector. However, compare with year 1982 which had 31.2% employed persons in agriculture sector, in 2012 there is only 12.6% in this sector. Percentage of male employed in agriculture sector increase from 59.6% in 1982 to 76.2% in 2012. For the percentage for female employed decrease from 40.4% in 1982 to 23.8% in 2012.

Innovation and Challenges in Malaysian Agriculture

Technological Innovation from Research Institutes

GOVERNMENT BODIES

1. MARDI
--Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute
--It is a is a government body in Malaysia under Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based  Industry (MOA).

2. MPOB
--Malaysian Palm Oil Board
--It is a government agency responsible for the promotion and development of the palm oil industry in Malaysia.
--It is one of agencies under Malaysia's Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities.

3. MCB
--Malaysian Cocoa Board
--It is a federal statutory research and development agency under the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Comodities (previously called Ministry of Primary Industries Malaysia).

4. MRB
--Malaysian Rubber Board
--It is the custodian of the rubber industry in Malaysia.

UNIVERSITIES

1. Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
2. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
3. Universiti Malaya (UM)

PRIVATE SECTORS

1. Sime Darby
2. IOI
3. FELDA ( Federal Land & Development Authority)
4. FELCRA (Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority)

Research and Innovation Technology

1. Oil Palm
--It is Malaysia's golden crop contributing about RM30 billion to its gross national product (GNP) annually.
--Improve the yield of oil palm to 35 tonnes fresh fruit bunches per hectare per year, using the Tenera hybrid bred from the crossing of Dura and Pisifera varieties in early years.

2. Rubber
--MRB has developed high yield and disease resistant clones.
--A high grade rubber named Standard Malaysian Rubber (SMR) has been introduced in the form of heveacrumb ( internationally recognized as high quality raw material).

3. Cocoa
--In 2002, a biotechnology division of the MCB was established to implement research and development in cocoa biotechnology and provide services to the entire cocoa industry by developing new technology, capacity building and innovation.
--Agrobiotechnology to improve productivity and production efficiency
--Biotechnology to enhance the quality of cocoa products
--Industrial and pharmaceutical biotechnology to obtain new products (useful bioactive compounds).

4. Paddy
--Malaysia currently achieves 70% self-sufficiency in rice.
--The use of a specially formulated chemical fertilizer in trial plats was successfully in doubling paddy yield and producing better quality rice.
--Vita-grow is a foliar fertilizer developed by UPM to enhance growth in paddy, vegetables, fruits and ornamentals.

--Zappa is another UPM product that enhances rapid germination and tillering.

Future Challenges in Agriculture

1. Labour
--There is dire shortage of labour in Malaysia.
--Local youths are less interested in agriculture.

2. Price
--Increase in price of fertilizers, seeds, tools and equipments has affected the cost of agricultural production.

3. Crop Choice
--Big Conglomerates are not interested in agriculture other than planting oil palm and rubber.

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Sustainable agriculture is the act of farming based on an understanding of ecosystem services, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. It has been defined as "an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will last over the long term".

Sustainable agriculture is very important for us to maintain it's sustainability because it does not deplete the earth's resources, does not pollute the environment, profitable and so on. There are three main goals that can help to maintain the sustainability and they are as follows :

• Socio-political benefits ~ where benefits are provided for the farm family and the community. Having good and proper marketing strategies involving direct marketing, making economic decisions that can give both side the benefits and so on.
• Economic development ~ where farmers can explore more income opportunities. There must be a comprehensive financial planning in an enterprise, learn many different ways of marketing such as considering organic supplies, GMO-free output and other "GREEN" markets.
• Environmental conservation ~ where where farmers should help to maintain the natural ecosystem to function well in the cycles and the input of a certain field should be an output and advantage to the other field and  it also involves keeping the 4 ecosystem in good condition ( Energy flow, water cycles, mineral cycles and ecosystem dynamics )

                                
                              Water Cycle
                 
                                Energy flow

                     
                             Mineral cycles

     
                           Economic system
                                   

Practices that can be done to maintain agriculture 
sustainability:
Inter cropping
cultivate more than one crop at a time and increase the sunlight capture. Example is coffee inter cropped with pepper.

Crop rotation 
provides complementary fertilization among the crops in sequence with each other. Example, forage crops in the rotation will reduce soil erosion and increase soil quality.  
Zero burning 
acknowledged by the world as an environment - friendly that is sustainable. Example is when old oil palm and rubber trunks are  not burned, but sliced thin and left to decompose.

Pest management 
consists of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) which is a basic framework to decide when and how pests are controlled. Helps to monitor and survey, record keeping and life-cycle information about the pests and their natural enemies.

Planning and Decision Making to Maintain Agriculture Sustainability

To manage the three objectives, economics, environment and society by providing tools for farmers such as for goal setting, decision making, monitoring, and many more in order to make sure their goals can be achieve .

That's all for now and till we meet again for the next topic next week. Bye and thank you for viewing our blog. Have a great day ahead (=

Industrial Crops

Industrial crops is a crop grown or cultivated plant that used as raw material to produce goods that used in production sector rather than food for consumption and it will impact the economic in the country by providing product to lessens the need for us to imports goods from other country.


1) Oil Palm

• Largest crop in country
• World's leading vegetable oil crop and its very high yielding crop
• Hard kernel(seed) within a shell(endocarp) serounded by mesocarp
• Mesocarp made up 49% oil & 50% kernel
• Palm oil from mesocarp & palm kernel oil from kernel

ISSUES IN OIL PALM PLANTATION

i) Impacts on environment

• 90%of animals habits has been destroyed
• deforestation for palm oil contributes to climate change

ii) Impacts on animals 

• animals injured, killed and displaced during deforestation
• orangutans often killed and their babies taken to be sold, used for entertaiment in wildlife tourism parks or kept as pets 

iii) Impact on people

• child labor in remote and rural area 
• children have to carry heavy fruit,weed fields and spend hours time bent over to collect oil palm from plantation floor

2)Rubber

• the rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis come from Amazon Basin,Brazil
• second largest crop in country
• natural rubber(latex) & synthetic rubbber (made artificially in chemical plant or laboratory)
• most natural rubber come from Far East, synthetic from France, United States & Germany

3)Rice

• third largest crop in country
• oryza sativa is generally an annual grass 
• originated from Thailand, India & Southern China
• nowadays in wet tropical, semi-tropical, or warm temperate areas
• for human consumption and wheat 

4)Coconut

•  4th largest crop in country
•  originated from Americas
• natural source of medicinal aid(improves hormone balance and support thyroid)