Salang urges MPB to produce instructional CD on pepper planting

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Salang (centre) and others posing with the top three winners of the children’s Pesta Lada Julau beauty pageant.

SIBU: The Malaysian Pepper Board (MPB) has been urged to produce instructional compact disc on pepper planting, garden maintenance and processing for distribution to farmers keen to cultivate the crop.

1Malaysia Sarawak Advisory Council chairman Datuk Joseph Salang said this would help the country increase the number and acreage of pepper farms.

He said this when launching the annual Julau Pepper Festival in Julau town on Friday night.

According to him, the country was once the world’s biggest producer of pepper in the 1970s, producing about 40,000 tonnes of the crop out of the world’s total production of 120,000 tonnes per year.

“Now it is about 20,000 tonnes,” he said.

Salang, who is also Julau MP, said he was glad to note that there had been renewed interest in the crop in Julau district lately.

The district, he added, was among the country’s biggest producers of pepper.

“We have some 100 families in Sungai Masit in the interior of Julau planting a combined total of 100,000 vines of pepper.

“I am also very proud to note that farmers like Mong Rengam, Jepun Lamit and Lanak Ramba from the area are now national figures in the country’s pepper industry because of their very committed involvement with the crop.”

Salang believed the crop could help the government eradicate rural poverty.

“Established pepper farmers can enjoy very good income from the current good market price. There is a farmer from the Sungai Masit area who recently sold RM200,000 worth of pepper and he still has some unsold stock,” he said.

Salang himself has also joined the district’s list of pepper farmers by planting some 5,000 vines in his first garden in Julau.

The government recently allocated nearly RM29.4 million to MPB for pepper development programmes this year. Malaysia has some 14,000ha of pepper farms.

Among others, it targets to have 785ha of new pepper farms through new planting, farm extension projects and replanting of old and unproductive areas.