KOTA KINABALU: Sabah can potentially earn RM8.7 million annually from cultivating hybrid corn, said the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-the Philippines East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) Business Council chairman, Datuk Roselan Johar Mohamed.
He said based on commercial planting over 404.68 hectares of land, the net profit derivable from the crop was about RM2.9 million per harvest.
“The hybrid corn needs 92 days before harvesting and this makes three harvests per year possible, meaning the cash-flow would be better and more meaningful to farmers.
“This is really good news for our farmers who may have idle land for further cultivation and respectively, increase household income,” he told Bernama recently.
Roselan said the introduction of hybrid corn was raised during the recent BIMP-EAGA meetings at Manado (Indonesia) and Davao (the Philippines) which highlighted the innovative introduction of hybrid corn, a non-genetically modified organism (GMO) type.
He said through the Sabah Bumiputera Chamber of Commerce (SBCC), a lead player in the various BIMP-EAGA meetings, the proponents of the hybrid corn made a power-point presentation to the Agriculture Research Centre in Tuaran recently and attended by more than 60 agricultural experts.
He noted hybrid corn cultivation was the next best solution to contract farming earlier practised in Sabah, which somehow experienced an uneventful death.
Currently, the district of Tuaran has picked up producing sweet corn owing to the successful purchase by a franchise owner.
“Perhaps, now is the best time to start all over again, simply because the harvesting time has been shortened and the corn price has gone up.
“Fertiliser requirement is also made easy by the introduction of a plant nutrient, Biojadi, in the form of foliar spray,” Roselan said.
He also said the hybrid field-corn had larger and heavier grains, which were ideal as main ingredients for use in animal feed-mill plants.
“The successful growth of field corn in quantum will necessitate the setting up of a animal feed-mill plant in Sabah, hopefully in the near future.
“If all works out well, Sabah can export animal feed to Peninsular Malaysia,” he added.
Roselan said Malaysia should not lose out on the importance of agricultural production that can keep pace with the population increase.
Referring to the Philippines’ experience, he said the country was once an importer of maize and over a short span of time, had produced enough arable land for maize cultivation to overcome the problem. — Bernama