Prediction of Future Situation of Rice Farming in the Muda Area, Malaysia

JIRCAS Journal
ISSN 13407686
NII recode ID (NCID) AA11030483
Full text

Purpose of this study was to analyze the farming conditions in terms of farming population and farmland in the largest paddy farming area of Malaysia. Based on the farmers' answers to a questionnaire (88 items), simulatims were made for a period of 20 years and the outcome represents the situation in the year 2013. The data were collected from all the residents (42 rice farmers) of a village in the Muda Irrigation Scheme area. Model building, which is an essential part of this kind of simulation, was carried out based on both survey data and previous related studies. The results of the simulation showed that if other conditions remained the same, the number of family members and people engaged in farm labors (hereafter referred to as "number of farm labor") at the survey site would decrease by 14% and 38%, respectively. As for farmland, it is forecasted that the size of owned land would decrease, while that of rent-in and rent-out land would moderately increase. It is also estimated that the size of operational land would slightly increase. The total population engaged in agriculture (rice farming) will decrease drastically in the year 2013. With the decreasing farming population, farm size (operational land per farm) will increase in the future. The simulation results also suggested that small-scale farmers were likely to rent-in land to increase their operation scale. Probability of the emergence of large-scale farmers will be high if the heads of farm households are young and wish to rent-in land to continue farming. However, if they decide to work in the nearby city, it is likely that they will not enlarge the size of operational land or will carry out farming on a part-time basis.

Date of issued
Creator Kumi YASUNOBU Foong Yee WONG Toshiyuki MONMA
Subject farmer's opinion simulation of agricultural population simulation of farmland
Publisher Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences
Available Online
NII resource type vocabulary Journal Article
Volume 7
spage 29
epage 43
Rights Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences
Language eng

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