The Ministry of Food Industry, Commodity and Regional Development (MIFCORD) is focusing on agricultural food production at Taman Pertanian Batu 11, Jalan Bintulu-Miri.
According to its minister, Dato Sri Dr Stephen Rundi Utom, the focus is currently on marking land plots: “The most suitable to be developed is Batu 11 with an area of approximately 1,000 acres, but there are 200 to 300 acres of land in that area being used by other parties without permission which requires us to deal with it according to the law.”
As agricultural parks already exist in Sarawak, there are various methods to develop agricultural parks and permanent food production parks with assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry. He stated that Batu 11 Agricultural Park will also be a research centre for rubber, bamboo, coconut and musang king durian.
Dr Rundi stated that his ministry would try to hold Agriculture Community Outreach Programme (AgriCOP) to provide information to longhouse folk on downstream agricultural products which would give better returns.
Source: theborneopost.com