2.4 Food Production Technology

Increasing Food Quality and Production

Food production technology helps solve global food shortage by increasing food quality and quantity, producing and using quality breeds, and applying modern technology.

Main approaches:

• Use quality breeds.
• Use modern technology.
• Provide education and guidance for farmers.
• Conduct research and development.
• Optimise land and water resources.
• Manage land efficiently.

Quality Breeds and Modern Technology

Examples of quality breeds:

• Tenera oil palm: larger kernel, thicker pulp, thinner shell and higher oil content.
• Bintang Mas starfruit (MSTAR 1, MARDI): golden yellow, sweet and crunchy.
• Mafriwal cow: hybrid dairy cow that produces much milk and adapts to tropical areas.
• Eksotika papaya: large and sweet.
• Akar Putra chicken: hybrid chicken that grows rapidly and has meat with the same texture as kampung chicken.

Quality plant and livestock breeds are obtained through cloning, cross-breeding, genetic engineering and mutagenesis. Their characteristics include:

• High yields.
• Higher-quality meat, milk and fruits.
• Rapid growth and maturation.
• High resistance to diseases, pests and extreme weather.
• Easy, low-cost maintenance.

Uses of modern technology:

• Grinding and liquid-filling machines speed food processing and manufacturing.
• Tractors, bulldozers and harvesters speed crop planting and harvesting.
• Embryo transfer, cloning and genetic engineering increase food quality and quantity.
• Cloning retains good characteristics of crop and livestock breeds.
• Drones spray pesticides, saving time and reducing labour cost.

Farmer Support, Research and Resource Management

• Education and guidance increase farmers’ agricultural knowledge and skills. Bodies involved include the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries, Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) and Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB).
• Research and development continuously improve food quality and production; universities also produce innovations such as products that tenderise meat.
• Ways to optimise limited land and water resources:
  • Develop idle land for agriculture or livestock.
  • Fertilise barren land.
  • Convert abandoned mining pools into freshwater aquaculture areas.
  • Convert marshland easily flooded by seawater into marine aquaculture areas.
  • Build dams and canals for agricultural or livestock land with water shortage.
  • Use soil-free farming methods such as aeroponics and hydroponics.
• FELDA restores idle land into fertile land suitable for agriculture.
• Efficient land management maintains soil fertility and increases the quality and quantity of crop yields through mixed planting, crop rotation and terrace farming.

Insecticides and Biological Control

• Crop pests include rats, grasshoppers and snails.
• Pesticides, such as insecticides, control crop-pest populations easily, but their use may:
  • Pollute the environment.
  • Increase pest resistance to pesticides.
  • Kill earthworms and useful soil microorganisms.
  • Contaminate land and crop yields.
• Biological control uses interactions between organisms, such as prey–predator and parasitism, to control crop pests in a habitat.
• Examples:
  • Barn owls hunt rats: prey–predator interaction.
  • Wasps lay eggs in butterfly eggs and destroy them: parasitism.

Advantages of biological control	Disadvantages of biological control
More environmentally friendly	Takes longer to control pest populations
Does not harm organisms other than crop pests	Results involving living organisms are difficult to predict
Does not cause pest resistance	Requires more detailed and effective planning and management
Cheaper	May disrupt ecosystem balance if predator or parasite populations become uncontrollable

• Poor planning can cause failure. Mongooses introduced to control rats in Hawaiian sugarcane plantations were active by day while rats were active at night; the mongooses instead ate birds and turtle eggs.