How COVID 19 effect Malaysian paddy industry? Adoption of green fertilizer a potential resolution

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in more than 4.3 million confirmed cases and more than 2,90,000 deaths worldwide. It has also given rise to fears of an imminent economic crisis and recession. Social distance, self-isolation, and travel restrictions have led to a reduction in the workforce across all economical sectors and have led to a loss of many jobs. Schools have closed down, and the need for commodities and manufactured goods has decreased. On the other hand, the need for medical supplies has increased significantly. The food sector is also facing increased demand as a result of panic buying and storing food products. In response to this global outbreak, we summarize the socioeconomic effects of COVID-19 on the various aspects of the world economy. In Malaysia, the COVID-19 epidemic has checked the resilience of the agriculture sector. Especially the Malaysian paddy industry as country imports 30% of its overall consumption from different parts of the world. The real price of rice triplicating for the consumers, which was alarming for nations in this pandemic situation. The Government of Malaysia introduced the National Agrofood Policy 2011-2020 (NAP4) in 2010 as a guidance document for the implementation of agricultural sector development programs and projects in Malaysia. The NAP4 's 10-year term is to be finished by the end of 2020. Several sectors demonstrate substantial success after approximately 8 years of introduction, while the other classes often lag behind the goal and progress quite slowly. Agricultural sector performance is affected by many problems and challenges. In acknowledgment of the poor success of this field, the Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Based Industry has launched new approaches, policies, and programs that can change the agricultural sector more rapidly. The new direction is aimed at ensuring national food security and boosting farm and revenues. The authorized government agency needs to revise the policy formulation where Malaysia needs to set stages to revolutionize and modernize the rice farming to address the problem faced by the paddy sector in this pandemic situation to adopt GF. In this study, the researcher focuses on the improvisation of the policy to increase the paddy production sustainably.

Escalating progression of mental health disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from a nationwide survey

“…Closure of schools and working from home have impacted business operations, with a consequent decrease in the demand for commodities. In Malaysia, like other countries around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused catastrophic economic and social disruptions [5][6][7]. The distancing measures, together with employment and financial insecurity, represent a massive mental health crisis affecting the wellbeing of populations throughout the world [8].…”

Assessing Public Awareness of the Economic, Environmental, and Social Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia

“…However, the farmland area (harvested area) is practically unchanged in the short run. The relatively recovery of food demand ensures that land-use change remains exceptionally close to baseline values (Adnan & Nordin, 2021). This, together with the little impact on forestry, indicates that decreased economic activity may have minimal effect on biodiversity and environmental services (Najah et al, 2021).…”

“…For instance, biotic resources are less impacted by material consumption than air pollutants such as ammonia (NH3) (Najah et al, 2021). Land use has altered, most notably in terms of harvested area, which has shrunk (Adnan & Nordin, 2021). However, the farmland area (harvested area) is practically unchanged in the short run.…”

Environment, Biodiversity and Soil Security: A New Dimension in the Era of COVID-19

“…This virus attacked and penetrated all aspects of our life including human health (Anser et al 2020;Celis et al 2020;Hagerty and Williams 2020;Mahmood et al 2020), our daily routines (Ali et al 2020), and all environmental compartments such as soil (Conde-Cid et al 2020;Lal et al 2020a, b), water (Langone et al 2021), air (Berman and Ebisu 2020; Anil and Alagha 2020),crop productivity (Yao et al 2020;Zhou et al 2020), environment (Lokhandwala and Gautam 2020;Espejo et al 2020;Juan-Reyes et al 2021;Mohan et al 2021) as well as the social, economic, environmental and energy domains (Mofijur et al 2021). This virus also impacted nearly all sectors on which our life depends including agriculture (Lal 2020;Meine 2020), industrial production (Adnan and Nordin 2020), tourism (Sigala 2020;Škare et al 2020), economic sector (McElwee et al 2020;Elliott et al 2020;Karmaker et al 2021) and other human activities (Nakajima et al 2021).…”