Solutions for the year-end glut of fruits in Sarawak

IN almost all the cities and towns of Sarawak over the last couple of months there has been an oversupply of fruits ranging from durians to rambutans, langsat, mangosteen and bananas. Prices have dropped to their lowest and there are even special offers of all-you-can-eat durian sessions.

Naturally, this is not to the farmers’ advantage, as agents simply pay the lowest prices for the fruits, which otherwise would rot. Unfortunately, this scenario is common in Sarawak yearly due mainly to the lack of marketing, transportation and repackaging/reselling opportunities.

When the state agriculture ministry promised to look into the plight of these farmers, one request made was to have farmers grouped into cooperatives in different regions; another was to seek inves- tors to market these fruits in different forms, like canned, processed products or even exported fresh frozen.

All these efforts have to overcome the most obvious issue in Sarawak: The vastness of the state and the lack of good roads to quickly ship the fruits to the required destinations. Even the state’s palm oil industry is faced with the issue of good roads into some remote areas.

Until the road system has been upgraded, this issue will continue to hinder any initiative to solve the over-abundant fruit supply problem.

The other issue is that most of these tropical fruits are ready for picking at the end of the year – something that cannot be changed, unfortunately. This then raises the problem of what to do with pro- cessing machinery during the rest of the year when the fruits are not available.

The state ministry could determine a fixed minimum price for fruits during such times but it would be difficult to enforce due to the varying distances to collecting centres in the state. Even if farmers agree to the prices, transporters too must be available and this is another issue to overcome.

The most practicable solution is probably for the state to set up processing centres in various locations with private enterprise partnerships during such periods. Over time, the state could pinpoint the types of fruits or vegetables that will be able to sustain the production centres during the rest of the year; these could be nonseasonal fruits like papayas, lemons, oranges, watermelons and others.

It is time that some solution be initiated for the farmers who continue to be exploited yearly due to the oversupply of fruits at yearend.