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.
