Archive for July, 2010

Will Malaysia achieve 100% self-sufficiency in rice by 2015?

Christopher Teh Boon Sung

Posted on July 18th, 2010

Update (22 Jun 2011):
Online news portal, Free Malaysia Today, used the information from this blog entry in their article “Tambatuon dam is unnecessary” (published Jun 14, 2011). Journalist, Stephanie Sta Maria, also conducted an interview with me regarding my views on rice production in Malaysia.

: Rice plant

: World rice production

: Rice productivity by country

: Average rice productivity by country

: Malaysia’s rice land area

: Malaysia’s rice production

: Malaysia’s rice productivity

: Malaysia’s rice per capita

: Malaysia’s average change in rice productivity

After having read Asian Geographic’s excellent rice edition (No. 74, Issue 5, 2010), I decided to download and analyze the freely available data on rice from FAO‘s website. I was particularly curious to see the latest rice statistics for Malaysia, and how Malaysia’s rice production stands against that from some countries as well as against the world as a whole.

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Categories: Science

Rice edition of Asian Geographic

Christopher Teh Boon Sung

Posted on July 15th, 2010

The latest issue of Asian Geographic (Issue 5, no. 74, 2010) caught my eye recently. This issue was dedicated solely on rice, and one of the main feature articles was on the work by IRRI (International Rice Research Institute), located Los Banos, Philippines. IRRI is of course very well known among agriculturists as one of the main rice research institutions in the world. IRRI was also actively involved in spreading the Green Revolution in Asia in the late 1960s, so it is rather ironic that IRRI is located in the Philippines, a country, once the second largest exporter of rice, is now the largest importer of rice in the world.

Asian Geographic (Issue 5, no. 74, 2010)

IRRI is actively involved in the work to create a C4 rice plant which, due to C4′s more efficient photosynthesis pathway, would produce higher yields and require less water to do so.

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Categories: Rants and raves, Science

Malaysia’s reading habit

Christopher Teh Boon Sung

Posted on July 6th, 2010

Update (23 Apr. 2012).
Ann-Britt Sternfeldt wrote an article about her experience on Malaysia’s reading habits. Her article is in Swedish and was published in BiS magazine. Read it here. You might want to use Google Translate to get a pretty good translation of her article.

It is well known, even among Malaysians, that Malaysians hardly ever read. So, imagine my surprise when the Information, Communication and Culture Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Rais Yatim, recently said that “Reading has become an enveloping habit for Malaysians with most reading an average of eight to twelve books per year.”

Datuk Seri Rais Yatim

In 1982, the National Literacy Survey carried out by the National Library reported that Malaysians only read an average of one to two pages a year. Fortunately, the reading habit among Malaysians improved to two books per year when the National Literacy Survey was repeated in 1996. Nonetheless, the last National Literacy Survey carried out in 2005 reported that Malaysians still read an average of two books a year. In short, there had been no improvement.

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Categories: Rants and raves, Work