Agricultural, veterinary and food sciences

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Browsing Agricultural, veterinary and food sciences by Subject "Agriculturally marginal lands"

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    Kesan perbandaran kepada pengekalan kawasan pertanian di MADA
    (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2015) Wan Ismail, Wan Ibrisam Fikry
    The ever reducing land area designated for paddy plantation in the MADA area (Muda Agricultural Development Authority) was feared to reduce the country's rice productivity. Paddy land located on the outskirts of Alor Setar City was seen to be the most vulnerable to be changed in its status of land usage. Existing policies such as the National Urbanisation Policy (DPN), National Physical Plan (PFN) and Kedah State Structural Plan (RSN) are clearly poised to defend paddy land status around the city of Alor Setar from being revoked, except those that have been identified as areas for development by the Alor Setar City Council (MBAS). This quantitative and qualitative research looks into three perspectives; namely the perspective of compliance to policy, perspective of policy implementation and from the perspective of the main target group of the policy, namely the paddy land owners. Investigation on land conversion transactions at Kota Setar Land Office (PTKS) found that most paddy land conversion activities occurred around the early 2000s to 2006. In 2008 only two rice land conversion applications were approved. The study shows that the current Kedah state administration does recognise and observe the PFN, DPN, Kedah’s RSN and Rancangan Tempatan Daerah (RTD). Studies conducted on 32 personnel who are also professionals in charge of implementing the policy found that 34% of respondents were of the view that the paddy land should be developed but a large proportion (53%) still held the opinion that the designated paddy land should be retained as per current status except when they have been gazetted for development by MBAS or identified for public infrastructure development. Study on the main target group of the policy involving 100 rice land owners showed that 94% of the land owners did favour keeping their rice lands citing MADA aid as the main incentive for them to continue to grow rice. Although total MADA paddy land area decreased, rice productivity has increased. MADA Rice Bowl is a major contributor to Malaysia's rice yield in 2009 with a production of 976.192 tons (38.9%). MADA has also acted to replace rice lands whose status has been converted or taken over by the government for other development purposes. Therefore, Alor Setar City is seen competent in tackling the spread of urban sprawl and is seen capable in preserving and conserving the paddy fields if all parties involved in the development could play their roles in accordance with the PFN, DPN, RSN, and RTD