Promote IOT agriculture in rural areas – Entrepreneur
KUCHING: Instead of giving cash aid to the people, it is better to help them build infrastructures needed for modern farming in the rural areas.
“Don’t give them fish, teach them to fish and provide them with modern fishing equipment,” chairman of the Rampangi Permanent Food Park Coolplay Nyipa Aji told The Borneo Post.
He said the returns generated from planting premium agriculture products would increase the income of the rural community.
On the Rampangi Permanent Food Park, Coolplay said: “This is a pilot project and being a participant myself I know it is very viable. Our elected representative must start spending their minor rural project fund to build rain proof structure in villages and longhouses,” he suggested.
Coolplay stressed that fertigation farming is very simple, user friendly and promises lucrative income.
Into his third month of participating in the scheme, Coolplay is looking forward to produce 4 tonnes of chilly in the first cycle from every unit of his fertigation farm.
“Each plant produce a minimum of 2.5 kilogramme of fruit, and each house (farm) can cater for 2,000 chilly trees,” he explained.
With proper guidance and right training, Coolplay believed the rural community will not be facing any problem to maintain the fertigation farm.
Meanwhile, a 31 year old graduate of University Putra Malaysia Bong Chee Kian who operates two units of fertigation farm in Rampangi was all smile when met yesterday.
“My plants are one month old now, and as you can see they have started flowering and in one month – they are going to bear fruits,” he said.
Bong have every reason to smile because the chilly will be harvested at the height of monsoon season when traditional farmers would normally have problem with the rainy season.
“Chilly now price around RM18 per kilogramme while the chilly paddy costs about RM30 per kilogramme,” he added.
Bong said his farm is maintained using a timer and very soon, it will go fully computerised as researchers from Agriculture Department of Sarawak are currently developing a system that will allow them to know their fertiliser nutrients, temperature and irrigation system via their smartphone.
Mohd Zulkarnain Ben, Officer in charge of Rampangi Integrated Research Station, told The Borneo Post that they are currently working with the researcher from Sarawak Agriculture Research Centre to develop an app via Android application.
“The process takes time and very costly but once the system is fully operational the cost will be very affordable,” he explained.
Zulkarnain also revealed that they are steadily shifting the Permanent Food Park into a tourism hub and hoped that the infrastructure fund will be available for road upgrading works.
“Actually we are open to the public, many tourist came visiting during Rainforest World Music Festival but there exist rooms for improvement for the facilities here,” he commented.
Zulkarnain said there are many varieties of fruits available in the research station that can act as pull factor for visitors, and very soon once they have stingless honey bees – they will have another star attraction.