KUCHING: Vanilla farmers are hoping that the Agriculture Department will assist them in planting vanilla which is the latest agriculture product that attracts buyers from Japan and USA.
Pending assemblywoman Violet Yong revealed that she had met Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) acting director general Zainal Abidin along with 30 other vanilla farmers to discuss how the department could help them.
“Vanilla farming is a lucrative business and the weather here is suitable for the plant. Even Japan is importing vanilla pods from Sarawak due to its high quality harvest.
“At the moment, small-scale vanilla farming is being carried out due to the lack of land and farmers who do not have the means to harvest enough.
Due to this, farmers are unable to meet the buyers’ demands despite having the knowledge of planting them,” said Yong during a press conference here yesterday.
She added that it takes at least three years to harvest the vanilla pods and hoped that Fama would come up with programmes to help farmers to start off on a bigger-scale.
A kilogramme of vanilla pods can easily fetch RM2,400. Meanwhile, Zainal assured that he would look into the issue, and possibly help the farmers to market their harvest to either Japan, China or other countries.
