MALAYSIA’s food-security debate is too often reduced to one question: how much food can the country produce? Production matters, but food security also depends on affordability, farmer livelihoods, resilient supply chains, and the health of the land, water and biodiversity that sustain future harvests.
The National Food Security Policy 2030 recognises this, identifying availability, accessibility, utilisation, stability, sustainability and agency as interconnected dimensions. The challenge is implementation.
Import dependence is a structural vulnerability. Malaysia is not short of food, but food imports reached about RM93.8 billion in 2024, with substantial dependence on imports for commodities including rice, beef and mutton. Imports can diversify supply and provide access to competitively priced food, but concentrated dependence exposes Malaysia to exchange-rate movements, export restrictions, shipping disruptions and climate shocks abroad. Sustained reliance on cheaper imports can also weaken domestic production incentives, undermine smallholder livelihoods and erode traditional agricultural knowledge, farming practices and local expertise, including the diversity of local seeds and plants cultivated across generations.
In early 2026, an oversupply of imported vegetables from countries such as China and Thailand drastically deflated prices. Wholesale prices for local produce fell by 73% to 90%, in some cases reaching as little as 30 sen per kilogramme. Many farmers were forced to sell at a loss or draw on their savings to continue farming. As the Federation of Vegetable Farmers Associations has warned, such conditions can displace Malaysian farmers and diminish the productive capacity on which long-term food security depends.
Domestic paddy production faces equally serious constraints. Sustainable paddy production requires reliable irrigation and drainage suited to local conditions, resilience to climate risks, improved yields, access to quality seeds, affordable inputs and services, appropriate mechanisation and viable farm incomes. The Malaysia Competition Commission has identified declining yields, seed shortages, service deficiencies and price disparities as key concerns in the paddy and rice sector. Its 2024 review also highlighted Bernas’ monopoly over rice imports and concentration elsewhere in the value chain, which can weaken farmers’ bargaining power.
These challenges are compounded by an ageing farming population: the 2024 Agricultural Census found that 45.4% of agricultural holders were aged 60 or above. At the same time, growing numbers of young Malaysians are participating in ecological farming and reviving local varieties, developments that are not necessarily captured by national statistics.
The response should not be to deepen farmers’ dependence on subsidies. As PeSAWAH, a national paddy farmers’ organisation, has argued, farmers need greater choice and competition, including the ability to choose where they obtain inputs and who buys their paddy. Market reforms should address structural constraints on their bargaining power. Where subsidies are retained, they should, where possible, be channelled directly to farmers rather than through intermediaries, enabling farmers to choose suppliers and encouraging competition.
Food security therefore requires more than subsidising farmers within an unequal market structure. It requires giving them agency, economic freedom and bargaining power to compete on fairer terms.
Access to productive agricultural land, and protection and restoration of the ecosystems that sustain food production, must be non-negotiables of Malaysia’s food-security strategy. The National Agrofood Policy 2021–2030 (NAP 2.0) recognises that unsustainable water use, excessive chemical and nutrient inputs, and land and habitat conversion can damage biodiversity and undermine food security. Soil degradation, polluted waterways and biodiversity loss threaten not only food production, but also water, economic and national security.
The United Kingdom offers a useful example of this broader approach. Its government’s 2026 strategic assessment examines how global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse could affect national resilience and security, including through disruption to food, water, health and supply chains. The UK is also bringing these concerns into foreign policy, briefing international partners, including the EU, Kenya and Australia, on the security implications while supporting international funding for nature protection.
Malaysia should respond with similar strategic urgency by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and sectors, consistent with Target 14 of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for biodiversity and its multiple values to be integrated into policies, planning, development processes and decision-making.
This also raises an important question about the direction of agricultural modernisation. Malaysia does not need to adopt every available technology simply because it is claimed to be technologically advanced. Precision agriculture and plant-breeding technologies may have legitimate applications, but technology cannot substitute for addressing the structural causes of food insecurity.
Applying the precautionary principle, Malaysia should not assume that genetically modified crops are necessary or appropriate to address these challenges. This is particularly relevant as the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability has held public consultations on proposed confined field trials involving genetically modified rice, maize and soybean. Any adoption should be approached cautiously and subjected to rigorous, independent assessment of potential impacts on food safety, ecosystems, biodiversity, farmers’ livelihoods and seed sovereignty.
More broadly, new technologies should be assessed against clearly defined food-security needs and measurable outcomes. Who controls these technologies also matters: proprietary technologies can be costly and increase farmers’ dependence on external companies and intellectual-property rights. Technology should complement—not displace—the reforms needed to build a resilient, sustainable and farmer-centred food system.
Similar caution applies to stronger plant-variety protection, including measures associated with the Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV 1991). UPOV 1991 establishes private rights over plant varieties; it is not itself about food security or Farmers’ Rights. Stronger breeders’ rights do not automatically produce greater food security. Research has documented the global shift towards stronger and increasingly harmonised agricultural intellectual property regimes, while expert literature has raised concerns that restrictive plant-variety regimes can constrain farmer-managed seed systems, agrobiodiversity and Farmers’ Rights.
United Nations human-rights experts have repeatedly warned against pressures on countries to adopt UPOV 1991 where this could restrict farmers’ seed practices and traditional knowledge. These concerns should be taken seriously. Before adopting measures that may affect Malaysia’s food security needs, Farmers’ Rights, agrobiodiversity and constitutional and international obligations, the government should publish transparent cost-benefit and socioeconomic impact assessments. This should include the proposed amendments to the Protection of New Plant Varieties Act 2004 (Act 634), the National Food Security Bill, the Fertiliser Bill and the agriculture and food-security pillar of the National Adaptation Plan.
Five practical priorities follow.
First, stabilise strategic supply chains. Establish crop-specific contingency mechanisms, diversified import sources, transparent buffer-stock rules and targeted temporary assistance during exceptional input-price shocks. Existing agricultural allocations can be reprioritised through meaningful consultation with affected communities and other stakeholders, while recognising the challenges of federal-state coordination.
Second, make ecosystem restoration central to national food and national security. The National Adaptation Plan and food-security policies should incorporate measurable targets for restoring degraded soils, watersheds, wetlands, forests, coastal and marine ecosystems, and agricultural biodiversity, supported by dedicated public financing and monitoring. Protecting the ecological foundations of food production should be treated as preventive investment in food security and sovereignty, rather than as competing environmental expenditure.
Third, strengthen farmers’ rights, agency and productive capacity. Climate shocks such as El Niño require more than ad hoc responses. The government should convene federal and state-level deliberations involving farmers’ organisations, smallholders, women farmers, youth, state agriculture authorities, researchers, water and climate agencies, Indigenous and local farming communities, and other affected stakeholders. Participation should extend beyond consultation after policies are formulated to include the design, assessment, implementation and monitoring of measures affecting farmers, including the proposed National Food Security Bill, Fertiliser Bill and National Adaptation Plan.
Protecting farmers’ rights and ensuring meaningful participation are essential to a resilient and sovereign food system, consistent with principles reflected in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.
Fourth, prioritise public investment in resilience. This includes reliable irrigation and water management, affordable finance, appropriate mechanisation, storage and post-harvest infrastructure, local and community seed banks, participatory breeding, agroecological practices and farmer-led adaptation. Farmers must retain meaningful control over the seeds, knowledge, resources and technologies on which their livelihoods depend.
Fifth, make affordability and farmer viability explicit outcomes. Malaysia should track the cost of a healthy diet, farm-gate incomes, production costs, post-harvest losses, import concentration, soil and water health, biodiversity and youth participation in farming. Public institutions can also use procurement to create stable markets for local producers.
A food-secure Malaysia needs a system capable of absorbing shocks while maintaining strategic domestic capacity and diversifying imports where unavoidable. It must restore our ecological foundations and preserve the genetic and knowledge diversity that gives farmers options.
Food security is not simply a race to produce more. It is about retaining sovereignty over what we grow and eat, and maintaining the capacity to keep producing, keep farmers on the land, keep ecosystems functioning and keep nutritious food within people’s reach.
Karina Yong is a senior researcher with the Third World Network, where she specialises on the impact of investment and trade agreements on human rights and laws and policies in developing and least developed countries.
Theivanai Armathalingam is a public interest lawyer and legal advisor to Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM).