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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I had no idea onions were an import in Malaysia.
A lot of our foods are. So every time our currency weakens, there goes our.food prices. The government isn't doing enough to combat the effect of weak currencies.
sort of surprised that there arent massive greenhouses (or whatever so you can regulate the air and soil temperature) - then you could grow a lot of produce domestically. really huge startup costs though.
It's not that we can't grow most of them locally, it's just not cost efficient to do so. Massive greenhouses, with all the expenses they entail, would not solve that issue.
only if you're SME. If anything, operating at a larger scale will yield higher profit due to economies of scale (up to a point tho)
it's just the cost of doing business and said expense is highly relative. And even within the industry, what is expensive for an SME in that particular sector is not necessarily expensive for larger corporations. different risk appetite, governance, funding etc.
There's a reason even the giant megacorps in the states are growing crops on soil, not giant greenhouses (for the most part). You think they wouldn't have moved over if it was potentially profitable to do so?
oh i wasn't talking about greenhouse, just farming in general. tho malaysia doesn't need green house, stable climate all year round.
You have a point. But they didn't exactly crank up the greenhouses, then how do we know indoor farming/greenhouses is not profitable tho in the context of discussing scale. even if sth is profitable corporations might shy away because it may take years of investment to pay dividends.
Ormaybe it's sth more simple - climate there doesn't require it, or the type of food they grow is not suitable for indoor farming or will have less yield. When i was travelling in Europe i saw loads of greenhouses, like thousands of them. Probably it's more suitable for them. Not too sure what's being planted tho but there's definitely utility in the concept itself that US farmers simply do not require.
yeah, i suppose importing makes sense then.
Our country's main cash crop is oil palm. There are rice fields and vegetable plantations but they are small scale and not locally sufficient, plus we export top-grade fresh produce to neighbouring Singapore.
The government has subsidies and price controls in place for staple foods (largely imported), and maybe got complacent in developing self-sufficiency since the supply and our currency was stable for a long time.
You need cool & dry climate to grow onions. Ours are too hot and wet.