Agriculture in the Malaysian Region

Chapter 9. Plantation Agriculture

Plantation Agriculture 181 181 chapter 9 plantation agriculture In tropical regions generally, the plantation is the epitome of capitalism in agriculture to the extent that P.P. Courtenay (1965) has suggested that a plantation bears more resemblance to a factory than to a farm. The plantation in the Malaysian region is no exception, though the exploitative elements which may have existed in the early days have long since disappeared under the surveillance and control of independent governments eager to protect the interests of their own nationals in the face of perceived threats from foreign entrepreneurs and under the steady attack of plantation workers’ unions. One result is that earnings by plantation workers in the 1970s were substantially higher than those of most smallholders and approached those of some industrial workers. Barlow (1978) gave MR1,560 per year as an average income for estate rubber tappers, compared with MR1,074 for rubber small-holders or MR1,500 to 1,600 in textile and plywood manufacture. These figures suggest that labour on plantations is not cheap and particularly so by comparison with land as a production factor. It was also not cheap by comparison with other countries producing much the same crops such as Indonesia and the Philippines . By the 70s coconut plantations were beginning to disappear under competition from lower-cost producers elsewhere. For estates especially, the ideal crops are those which require infrequent planting (since planting requires much labour only for a short time) and a continuous labour input. The fact that plantations also must bear much of the cost of social infrastructure also pushes their crop choice towards perennials. In Malaysia, the perennial tree-crops, rubber, oil palm, tea, as well as pineapples meet these requirements. Though transportation and processing are mechanized, actual production in the field cannot be, so that labour costs form the bulk of total costs — often as much as 60 per cent or more in the case of rubber. It is thus no coincidence that the relatively empty lands of the Malay Peninsula and Sabah (then North Borneo) 182 Agriculture in the Malaysian Region were attractive to foreign capital on both economic and environmental grounds, an attractiveness greatly enhanced in the 1870s by the imposition of British control. Against these factors were the limited development of infrastructure, especially in the case of Sabah where the state was owned in its entirety by a chartered company which had then to provide all of its own infrastructure, economic, social and political. Thus an important locational factor in addition to the availability of vacant land within regions well-suited to plantation crops was the existence of communications, initially often by river, and of port facilities (P.P. Courtenay 1965; 1979). The present distribution pattern of plantation agriculture, therefore, owes a great deal to historical factors which are considered in more detail in a later section. This distribution has not been studied in detail, so that Figure 9.1, compiled from state land use maps of varying dates supplemented by large scale topographical maps, must be regarded as indicative rather than authoritative, particularly as only the location and not the extent of estates is shown. Nevertheless, the western distribution of estates in the Peninsula is clear, the most striking feature being a broad belt from central Selangor south to Melaka. While some of the estates in this belt were large, most, especially rubber estates, were rather small, perhaps reflecting the long period over which the plantation industry has been established there. In the north a similar belt of estates extended southwards from the hill country of southern Kedah and inland Seberang Perai. There the Uniroyal rubber plantation of 4,159 ha was an exception to the usual moderate size. Elsewhere in the western states (except on Pinang Island) plantations were fewer in number. Many were notably large and grew more than one crop, especially those bordering the lower Perak, Bernam, Selangor and Langat rivers, many of which were established before 1900, having not been significantly subdivided. A further zone of large estates lay along the railway in Johor where some exceeded 8,000 ha, two of the largest being the Labis Estate (8,221 ha) owned by a subsidiary of the Socfin company and the Ulu Remis estate owned by Oil Palms of Malaya Ltd. Sabah contained the largest unit in the region, the Bal Estate (9,498 ha of rubber, oil palm and cocoa) situated near Tawau. Areas which notably lack estates are northern Kedah and Perlis, which...