Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim to scheduled to visit the Tanjung Rambutan INTAN IPR site today (Jan 28), which is locate in his Tambun Parliamentary constituency for the first time. This is the first time PMX visited the IPR INTAN site.
Since its launch, the poverty alleviation program through the IPR approach has often been the subject of ridicule by a few people.
In a post by Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli on X today, he said some say it’s not new and often criticise agriculture initiatives renderin such programmes are often failures.
Refizi explained for every government program that takes a new approach, there is indeed a risk of failure or abandonment. Not to mention those involving poverty alleviation and agricultural activities.
“I am trying to understand why some agricultural projects involving low-income participants did not succeed as previously planned. There are several main causes,” he said.
First, the operational risk is when the crop is attacked by disease and the quality of the harvest is not good. Second, market risk when prices are uncertain. Which leads to the third risk, which is that the revenue generated cannot cover labour/time costs, fertilizer costs and operations.
All these leads to the last risk, which is that participants quickly give up. Finally, all assistance (capital, polybags for planting, fertilizers and others) is abandoned after one season (or not even one season).
The INTAN’s IPR approach which sees an agricultural site as a “factory” tries to resolve all these risks.
“Participants become workers who manage plots that have been developed with modern agricultural methods and are given training. If they give up early, there will be new participants who come in to continue, like new factory workers replacing those who have quit.
The sales contract was tied to the buyer at a certain price, so that the participants did not have to sell the produce themselves. Operating costs have been included in the overall financial planning, instead of being given in the form of capital and fertilizer to participants.
Participants are guaranteed to receive at least RM2,000 per month for each crop rotation, with an allowance of RM600 per month in the first 2-3 months before harvest.
