KOTA KINABALU: Only 15 per cent out of the total population of Malaysia of 25.6 million in 2005 were involved in agriculture.
This was a reduction from the 39 per cent out of 13.8 million people in the country who were in the sector in 1980.
The statistics were highlighted by Professor Dr Tania Murray Li, Professor of Anthropology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto during the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM 2011) held at Le Meridien yesterday.
Dr Murray Li added that the reduction showed a shift in land use away from agriculture by the people in the country.
“There are also fewer people living in the rural areas in Malaysia as well as in Thailand,” she said.
In countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam, however, the number of their rural population is still large.
She cited the reasons for the reduction in the population in the rural areas are due to the setting aside of huge areas for conservation as well as the establishment of large scale commercial plantations for crops like oil palm.
Sabah, Dr Murray Li said, is one of the leading states in the country which is heavily into planting oil palm and that the large scale commercial oil palm plantations in the state have massively changed land use.
“Farmers and smallholders who are unable to compete with commercial plantations are bought out,” she said.