The Integrated Agricultural Development Project (IADP) Kalaka-Saribas, started four years ago, is beginning to bear fruits literally. Its Fruit-Planting Scheme is showing some encouraging results in fulfilling IADP’s goals of developing barren lands and producing more competent farmers.
IADP’s Director, Tuan Haji Khalidi Othman said that fruit orchards of the people who had joined the scheme had already borne fruits, helping increase the farmers’ income and boosting food production in Sarawak.
Tuan Haji Khalidi recalled that during the initial stage of their Fruit Planting scheme, IADP faced many obstacles in convincing the people to get involved. With their stafff’s dedication, encouragement and motivation, they were able to convince the people to adopt the scheme.
“With the success of the scheme, the farmers now realize that it is possible to increase food production with efficient, systematic agriculture practice and technology,” said Haji Khalidi. He added that it has now become easier for them to engage the local farmers to get involved in their programmes.
The interesting thing about the program is the infrastructures provided by IADP including irrigation and transportation systems to the farm.
“We are now giving more attention to the development and maintenance of irrigation to boost production the farms in our schemes. We are also looking into setting up more efficient transportation systems for ease of marketing of the farm produce,” said the IADP Director.
Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the IADP will focus on three main crops, according to Haji Khalidi. Based on initial plans, 405 hectares are allocated for citrus, 944 hectares for mango and 592 hectares for pineapple.
However, with the overwhelming response from the farmers, IADP has decided to develop another 800 hectares of land for pineapple and 300 hectares for mango in the next five years.
IADP Project is one of the government’s efforts to increase the food production in the state as well as reduce the food import. Until now, several IADP areas had been developed among which are in Kabong (Cash Crops), Alit (Pineapple), Nyabor (Mango), Kaba’ (Pineapple) and Parpat (Citrus).
With improved harvests from the fruit farms under their scheme, IADP has started to implement a training programme on developing and producing downstream products such as fruit juice processing or fruit chips.
According to Ellis Ak Jeluni, IADP Agriculture Assistant, they are now conducting a fruit chips production course, with ten to twenty participants for every course. The participants will be trained in using the vacuum-frying machine.
En. Ellis, who is also the supervisor for the course, said that the main objective of the IADP training programme is to add value to the farm produce from their Fruit-Planting schemes.
He explained that most of the fruits chosen in this scheme are rich in fibre and can thus be easily converted to chips. This will ensure that farmers will have a more diversified means of generating income from their fruit farms, thus improving their socio-economic status.
