Fama, Agri Dept must up efforts to nurture local entrepreneurs
MIRI: Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) and the Agriculture Department need to intensify their programmes on nurturing local entrepreneurs in the agriculture industry in order to increase their farm produce for local and export markets.
Minister of Transports Datuk Lee Kim Shin said one of efforts towards achieving this target was to increase research on the niche produce.
“Sarawak needs more entrepreneurial people who complain less but are committed in developing and marketing their products their produce besides being innovative in their packaging and labelling,” said Lee after officiating at the state-level carnival and the ‘Jualan Terus Dari Ladang’ (Straight-fromthe-Farm Sale) at Bintang Megamall here yesterday.
He was representing Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah at the function, which also saw the presence of Fama state director Shahid Abu Bakar and his deputy, Abdul Jaafar Lian.
Lee, who is Senadin assemblyman, was happy that Fama was organising the carnival, a strategy to boost sales of their contract farmers and those involved in downstream processing of agriculture and fisheries-based products.
“I am so happy to see that more than half of the 35 entrepreneurs participating in the carnival are young people.
“Generally, they reported good sales, and yesterday alone the total sales were RM50,000. This is very encouraging, and interestingly, they are also very innovative in their packaging and labelling of products,” said Lee
Meanwhile, Shahid said Fama was committed in raising the income of their contract farmers and would continue to scout potentials farmers to be included under their Contract Farm Scheme.
“So far we have 4,033 farmers in Sarawak under the scheme, about 500 of whom are in Miri, while 1,300 others are involved in downstream processing of agriculture and fisheries-based products,” he said.
He said the carnival was one of their strategies to boost sales and to increase the participants’ income. The three-day carnival hopes to achieve a target sale of RM150,000.