Have you been to the market recently and scratched your heads at the rising prices of vegetables and fruit. What do you do?
Vegetable and fruit prices have almost doubled over the last six months or so. And there is nothing to suggest that it won’t rise even further.
At one time, we had quite a few vegetable farms in Penang. Now most of our vegetables and fruit have to be brought in from Camerons, Australia, China and the United States.
This is not an ideal situation on three counts:
- Transporting food from great distances increases the carbon foot-print of these items.
- We become more dependent on external sources for our food, i.e. we move away from self-sufficiency and food security. What happens when these places don’t have enough to supply us? Prices will rocket, as we are gradually finding out now.
- We get hooked on the pesticide/chemical model of agrobusiness. By right each state in Malaysia should be looking into what it can do to promote self-sufficiency in organic food. Perhaps we could become a hub for organic food in the region.
Now along comes an initiative to show what ordinary people like you and me can do.
