*credit goes to Justin for pointing out a huge mistake in the conversion of ha to km2* (27th March 2010)
I've always wondered whether it was a right move for the Brunei government to jump into this self-suffiency for rice thing. It always seemed as if the authorities never thought of it, was then prompted by His Majesty and jumped straight into the matter. I'm seeing headlines everywhere with land allocated to padi planting. I've debated this the issue of land use with a number of people and I'm a bit slow, but it just hit me this morning that I can estimate how much land is required to feed Brunei!
The figure above shows my estimations based on numbers from different sources. The green squares show the different land areas (plotted to scale with the Brunei map in the background) required for different yield scenarios.
It seems like with a low yield, we would require about 10% of our land area (60 000 ha). The lowest yield is not too far from that of Wasan. As you can see, if we're stuck to a low yield, the implications is that to feed out population of 300 000-400 000 people, we require about 10% of the total land area of Brunei. The current planned land allocation is hovering about 4000-5000 ha. This of course assumes a higher yield, possibly an over optimistic one too. The figure shows that even with a high yield of 4 tonnes/ha yr, we require about 7500 ha to provide a 100% self-sufficiency.
It now becomes obvious that for this plan to work, a lot of effort has to go into improving the yield of the padi crops. There is an exponential increase in land requirement with the decrease in yield. Brunei has committed itself a large proportion of its land to the Heart of Borneo Project. A recent talk by Tuan Haji Yunos revealed that we actually only have 5% of the land area unconstrained. A low yield, requiring 10% of the land area, will definitely not be feasible. Even an optimistically high yield would still require about 1-2% of the land area, which is a more reasonable number but still not insignificant.
Another point worth thinking about is that even if we can feed ourselves in 5 years time, will the land be sustainable to feed the population let's say.. in 25 years time when the population grows to half a million, a million?
So what does this leave us with? We're in what i would say a 'gray zone'. It is not exactly impossible, but challenging. It is not exactly very wise too. This area is definitely up for debate. I just hope the authorities know what they are doing now..
[Again, if you manage to work through the calculations/estimations and find any mistakes, please let me know.]
8 comments:
what software you used to draw that diagram?
Hi Azhar, I put together the information using photoshop. The size of the each square was calculated using some estimations and then scaled accordingly.
I sense a tinge of MacKay-ness
of course ;-)
is 60000 hectares = 600 km2?
cos that would make it 10% of our total landmass not 1%?
thanks justin. someone checked! =)
that's interesting. now i have to redo the map and maybe have a second opinion on the government's policies..
No problem.
I think what would potentially be useful as well would be an estimate of not just the proportion of total land area but the proportion of total undeveloped land area.
That calculation would take into account urbanised residential areas and would give a better idea of how much of our available land we will need to produce enough rice to be self-sufficient. It would be a hard sell to knock down Gadong to build a padi farm!!
Even then though, this would not be taking into account other confounders such as national parks, primary rainforests, and the fact that a lot of the land that we do have is poor agriculturally, at least for rice crops - either issues with the soil surface itself, or with the the relief or terrain of the land.
At a broader level while food security is an issue, I'm not entirely sure we can divorce it from economic security - by which I mean if vast amounts of money were spent on achieving self-sufficiency in rice, in an era of limited financial resources, could that money have been more effectively spent on, for example, developing financial institutions, or setting up an economic infrastructure which attract foreign direct investment? I'm not entirely convinced either way tbh.
My biggest gripe with the policy though is the way the policy came about as a response to a titah. That is a thoroughly unscientific method of developing policy. What should have happened is that structures that should have been put in place to assess quantitatively the needs of the population would then, based upon the available evidence propose a mathematical model which would then be used to inform, develop or discard the policy. It seems to me that this particular issue, and other important issues like whole population vaccination for H1N1 (an economically unsound policy if you look at the both models of herd immunity in the recent journal articles), or even the setting up of new state-run universities, were set up not in response to what the scientific and economic evidence suggests but on the desires (genuine, sincere and goodwill I should add) outlined in a titah. Goodwill and personal experience alone is not enough to direct policy. Viable strategies have to come as a result of what the evidence suggests.
Interesting blog though! I didn't realise there were so many other bruneians in cambridge - I mean I knew there were a few but I've never seen you guys around! lol
i totally agree with your opinions on this. will re-make the map when i find the time to.
are you studying at Cambridge? there are a couple of us around actually.
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