Agricultural development emphasis to increase food production — Musa
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah places strong emphasis on the development of agriculture to increase food production, said Chief Minister Tan Sri Musa Haji Aman.
He said the State, in partnership with the federal government through various agencies like the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Fisheries, had been involved in various programmes focusing on improving livelihoods.
“In these various undertakings, we work closely with experts from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and their partners in both upstream and downstream research to come up with sustainable solutions, value enhancement of products and diversification on the usage of products,” he said.
Sabah, he said, had tremendous potential, in its people, in its natural resources, including but not limited to wild edible food items, most of which were still unknown to science.
Musa mentioned this in his speech, which was delivered by the Minister of Community Development and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Jainab Ahmad Ayid, at the opening ceremony of the International Conference on Food Science and Nutrition (ICFSN) 2017 held here yesterday.
The conference, themed ‘Exploring Foods for the Future: Scientific Discovery and New Trends’, is organized by the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition of UMS.
Musa said the growing population, climate change and a heightened risk of failing harvests would accelerate the global food crisis that already had tragic consequences in many countries.
He said global food security was a complex issue that required urgent responses from the international community.
“Sustainable food innovations and new agricultural technologies have the power to help us feed the world of tomorrow,” he said.
Looking at the aggressive growth of food industries, he said a variety of development and innovations have been set into motion.
Musa said food development and innovation not only involved technologies to increase nutritional value, but also innovation from the aspect of food safety and traceability.
“This applies to the entire food system, including production, post-harvest, processing, distribution and services,” Musa noted.
He said the emerging trend in this regard was the application of biosensors in the food industry with biosensors research booming around the world due to its wide applications, ranging from medical to agricultural fields.
“Biosensors can overcome all the disadvantages of using conventional approaches by offering rapid, non-destructive and affordable methods for quality control. Thus, food innovation should be in line with advancement in technology, as well as evolution in social and environment needs in order to produce food that meets nutritional requirements and community demands,” Musa stated.
He said the food industry had been facing technical and economic changes both in society and in manufacturing and food processing.
“These have, in turn, had significant impacts on the entire food supply chain, up to the distribution of food to end consumers, and has forced companies to pay high attention in food products that meet the consumers’ demand for a healthy lifestyle.”
As a consequence, Musa said innovation had been widely investigated also within this traditional industry.
“I believe that the ICFSN 2017 theme is brilliantly chosen and very timely in the sense that the whole world is now looking into current trends and emerging opportunities for innovation available to explore the future of foods.”
He said science and technology had proven to propel economic growth, eliminate poverty and encourage sustainable development.
“I strongly believe that all countries should consider strategies that enhance sciencebased research and development of food and encourage new and innovative food technologies.
“In this regard, I hope there will be more scientific discoveries and innovations that take into consideration to combine technological innovation with social and cultural innovation in order to produce food that satisfies the nutritional, personal and social needs of all communities.”