The Thornberries

There was a cruel joke that tells about Singapore buying Malaysian grown fruit at dirt cheap price

Once there, they repacked/rebadged the fruit and exported it, selling at a premium price especially to the European.Some quarters of European cherishes tropical fruit. It turns out this cruel joke is indeed true. Our fresh exports to Singapore has long been a golden opportunity for Singapore to turn it into fortune beyond what thought possible.

Realizing this, Malaysian ministry of agriculture under Muhyiddin Yassin made a swift effort to introduce the ‘Malaysia’s Best’ campaign. As far as my graphic memory can confirm, there is a logo created for it. This logo was mend to be like badges similar to what Intel would do on personal computers/notebooks that is embedded with their processors: Intel Inside!

Malaysian Best logo had a kampong man silhouette resembling a farmer holding a fruit basket with both hands . A cloth is wrapped around the farmers forehead telling people the time/manpower consumed caring a tropical fruit. Encircling the fruit farmer and his fruit produce is the ‘Malaysia’s Best’ itself encased in dark brown lettering and soil brown underlying colour. It seems like a pride waiting to happen and chart Malaysian name in international consumer preferred list. Like Caviar from Russian lakes, Diary products of New Zealand or high-grade chocolates of the Swiss, Malaysia is poised to be the origins of exotic tropical fruits soo yumilicious as hollywood would portray it in its island gateway movies.

Our dash of hope is gone as ‘Malaysia’s Best’ are nowhere to be seen today. If it had been famous elsewhere, word of buzz shall bounce and return to our shores. Neither that occur, we are shunned by the mysterious fate of the glad farmer with the pineapple in his hand. He must be lost or drowned in the waters where trade ship passes. Pity his pineapple.

Recently, if most of us can recall, there was a marketing campaign promoting wood products. It was simply named ‘Malaysian Wood’. The logo featured nothing fancy, just the marketing name itself in kindergarten writing style with a leaf growing out of an alphabet through some kind of lab-manifested scary photosynthesis process.

Its been months since Malaysian wood appeared on architecture digest and has even made it into airtime commercial for television. The multipurpose and highly-durable plus highly esthetic quality of our wood can create wonders, from little furniture, pond bridges, intricate carved doors to a big bungalow made of timber. Giving the same impression that Malaysia will mark itself in global map as exotic wood producer. Like Russia with caviar(and vodka), like swiss with its chocolates(and army knife).

Again, joke has surfaced that Singapore had, for decades, imported felled timber from us turning them into marvelous furniture and selling it to continental upper crust society for a fortune. How and why this had occur? Are we lacking in craft skills? Local school syllabus had greatly emphasizes on carving since secondary level, but we still lacked passionate carvers?

Complaints only, need solution?

Tiger Woods may be troubled with sex-scandals, but what had troubled ‘Malaysian Wood’?The lackluster in promoting our woods may lead this marketing campaign into another bomb initiative following the fate of Sekolah Kluster, PPSMI, backseat safety belt, insulated iceboxes, children toys safety classifications and not forgetting Malaysia’s Best. Timber can be another source of high income for the government and the nation as a whole. It’s a natural resource that is irreplaceable, so to say, we need to give it a special attention. Like our oil wells being systematically managed by PETRONAS, we need to centrally manage our wood as a valuable resource.

Ask an SPM student to prepare an essay of how to promote our fruit or wood industry, and they will nicely lists down brilliant suggestions. Their suggestions are so brilliant that they shall be awarded with A. Yet, almost all Malaysian citizen knew these ideas are of no value to the people above; they’ll be too much bureaucracy and interest to protect which halt the implementation those suggestions. There are people who were given import permit to bring in cheap fruits at huge quantities. There are people given the timber felling rights, these ‘sacred cows’ made Malaysia’s Best and Malaysian Wood campaign as mere showpiece to the public that the government is keen on promoting. Where else, God knows.

Earlier entries had me several times mentioning about spoilt kids wearing overgrown shades of Prada,Gucci and Dolces, those are not mere words of hatred thrown to those privileged kids. These kids Im referring to are of those gained comfort of life through other sufferings. Vegetable planters and fruit farmer’s cried foul knowing their produce are no more needed in the market which had been flooded with imported fruits and vegetables. Importers who pocket in big money. Importers kids who later would speed off through LDPs with their Volkswagen Golf GTIs while poking fun at his pretty girlfriend in the passenger seat. Since last year I had stopped using this ‘verbal tantrums’, yet Im compelled to use it again to refer to our planters/farmers sufferings.

Fans of statistics, numbers and figure would shake their head off reading my allegations. They want to see the tons and metrics of veges/fruit imported and gross consumption. This data may look fine and dandy, although without analytical research the real situation may show the reverse. Big planters sell their produce to Singapore. While appointed importers shall make up for the loss with cheap baulk produce. What’s left is small and medium scale planters succumbed to make into rapid streaming outgoing and incoming flux of commodities.

A party like UMNO should have taken note realizing majority of Malays is still doing agriculture. If they desperately need to repair their image, this is the time. Sadly, telling their ‘people’ to stop importing agriculture produce is no easy business. Its akin to pouring sand into the rice bowl of a few people while the massive number farmers/planters had long felt the sharp noise of sand laden rice. This kind of situation is what we call it is: favoritism.

Pertanian satu perniagaan. Perniagaan untuk orang atasan. Might as well play FarmVille on Facebook. Not forgetting, the cruel jokes of Malaysian Wood and Malaysia’s Best