Food Crisis and Brunei

During the Investiture Ceremony in conjunction of the 62nd birthday of His Majesty the Sultan dan Yang Di Pertuan Negara Brunei Darussalam, His Majesty the Sultan, in his titah, asked why Brunei had not been able to increase its self-sufficiency in its rice production. The 2007 statistic revealed that Brunei was only able to produce a mere 3% of its total rice consumption and the rest were imported. He mentioned that he had brought up this matter repeatedly in previous years, but it looked as if it fell on deaf ears.

During the Israk Mekraj celebration, His Majesty in his titah touched on the issue of self-sufficiency again. He even said that he would not stop stressing the need to increase Brunei's self-sufficiency, especially on rice production.

There was this well-written article on the feasibility of making Brunei self-sufficient on its food needs. The author may be right to argue that in the short run, the efforts to make Brunei self-sufficient would be a good interim solution, but it may not be so in the long run.

At work today, we talked about the local rice production. One of us was apparently told by his uncle that the Ban area in Mulaut was initially supposed to be used as a rice plantation area. Perhaps he was right. 'Ban' was not really a Malay word and it was perhaps a derivation from the English word 'bund' which meant an enclosure or a wall. As you may have figured out, the roads around the Ban area are labelled Ban 1, Ban 2 and so on. The roads might have been the walls of each rice planting plot. If you look carefully, the roads are actually raised from the ground level. As with any rice plantation area, it would have to be well irrigated. Water is essential as it provides a favorable environment for the rice strains being grown as well as discouraging the growth of many species of weeds (from Wikipedia). When the area was first developed, it was perhaps designed to be on a lower lying area and that was probably the reason why the area, which is now becoming a residential area, is always flooded whenever it rains. Perhaps over the years, people start to use the area as a residential area and houses were built. And during this period, the authority might have turned a blind eye and let houses to be built in an area designed for paddy plantation.

So can anyone actually check if this is correct?

The picture below is the satellite image of the Ban area in Mulaut. You could see the roads in the Ban area and the roads actually formed the borders of individual rectangles which were probably planned for the individual paddy fields.