'Climate' of fear grips rice bowl state

New Straits Times

14-07-2025

ALOR STAR: Ramli Wahab admits he knows little about climate change, but he is certain that weather patterns have changed.
"The heat is harsher. The rain comes all at once. It ruined our schedule," the farmer, 81, said.
In his northern Kedah village, planting schedules were thrown into disarray.
Floods in September wiped out 1,276 metric tonnes of padi across 232ha, affecting 93 farmers and causing losses of about RM2.3 million.
"Thousands of ringgit gone, just like that," Ramli said, recalling how 12 relong (3.1ha) of his padi land was inundated.
Kedah's once verdant padi fields are locked in a struggle for survival because of climate change.
Erratic rainfall, deepening droughts and sudden extreme weather events create a perfect storm atop longstanding agricultural challenges.
Kedah became a showcase for climate volatility last year.
In April 2024, a heatwave scorched the state, sending temperatures soaring past 40°C and desiccating the soil.
A few months later, farmers faced the opposite nightmare: torrential rains that unleashed the worst flooding the state had seen in decades.
It was not just smaller farmers like Ramli who suffered.
Farmers with bigger operations, like Megat Asmadi Megat Saidin, 53, said the late-2024 floods cost him nearly RM100,000 in losses.
"I manage 60 relong (15ha), and I also run tractors to help other farmers prepare their fields.
"When the floodwaters came, all that work came to a standstill.
"Everything stopped. If I add up my losses and the service income I couldn't earn, it was in the six figures, easily."
This year, planting for the 2025 season in many parts of the state only began in mid-June, a few weeks behind the usual schedule.
The delays disrupted the Muda Agricultural Development Authority's (Mada) two-crop cycle and dimmed hopes of achieving the much-touted five harvests in two years.
In Pokok Sena, 50km away, farmers battled a record-breaking drought around the same time. The district briefly became the hottest spot in Malaysia. Fields cracked under a merciless sun.
"April last year was the worst heat I've ever lived through," said Mohd Farid Shafie, 36, who farms about 150 relong (37.5ha) in Kampung Gulau.
"The heat was unforgiving, both day and night. Our yields dropped, and we lost maybe 30 per cent of the harvest in my area."
While 2025's heat spell has been milder, Farid said the rain has turned erratic.
"Now we get dry spells, then downpours. It throws everything off. We can't plan anything with certainty anymore."
Fishermen, too, are feeling the pinch of a changing climate.
Che Ani Md Zain said that waves have grown stronger and more unpredictable, sometimes pushing fish further offshore.
That makes it harder for small-scale fishers to get a decent catch, adding economic strain on farming communities that rely on land and sea for income.
Back on the padi fields, he pointed to another man-made problem — ageing infrastructure that cannot keep up with nature's new extremes.
"The irrigation system here was built in the 1970s. It wasn't made to handle this kind of climate or the amount of water we need now," Che Ani said.
Without urgent upgrades, he believed even maintaining current production rates would be an uphill battle, let alone increasing it. "We talk about growing more rice, but how are we going to do that if the basic systems cannot support us under these harsh conditions?"