American-Eurasian J. Agric. & Environ. Sci., 12 (7): 922-931, 2012 ISSN 1818-6769 © IDOSI Publications, 2012 DOI: 10.5829/idosi.aejaes.2012.12.07.1769 Corresponding Author: Md. Mahmudul Alam, Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), National University of Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia. and Research Fellow, Integrated Education and Research Foundation, 41/2 Purana Paltan, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 922 Initiatives and Challenges of Agricultural Crop Sector in East Coast Economic Region (ECER) Development Projects in Malaysia Md. Mahmudul Alam, Golam Morshed, Chamhuri Siwar and Md. Wahid Murad 1 1 1 2 Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), 1 National University of Malaysia (UKM), 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia Business School, Faculty of the Professions, 2 The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia Abstract: The share of agriculture to GDP is continuously declining in Malaysia, but agricultural sector is very crucial to ensure food security, employment generation, socioeconomic improvement, economic growth, poverty reduction and overall achievement of vision 2020. The East Coast Economic Region (ECER) represents 34% of total national agricultural area, which has a good potentiality to improve productivity and reduce high poverty intensity in this area. Realizing the importance, Malaysian government has taken a large development project in the ECER region in 2006, but much is not known about the project due to limited number of study and unavailability of official performance report of the project. Hence this study is an attempt to explore one of the niche areas, which is agricultural crops sector. The major initiatives of agricultural crops sector include establishing three agro valleys as major vegetable and short-term crop growing areas. These involve organized modern farming methods in a sustainable manner to improve efficiency and productivity of agricultural production of paddy, vegetables and fruits. The prospects of the project are also very much anticipative, because the size of domestic market has grown in recent years. But there are lots of challenges to meet the target of the project. Institutional supports, physical infrastructural supports like transportations, irrigations and preservation facilities are not adequate in this area. To meet the target and to ensure the success of the projects, some more initiatives for improvements and proper management are also necessary. These include, for example, farmer’s cooperative or institutional involvement for marketing the crops, financial supports and subsidies, cooperation among agents and departments, training to avoid environment degradations and adaptation techniques to cope with adverse effects of climatic changes, etc. It is expected that the relevant government authority and agencies, especially the ECER project authority, will be highly benefited from the findings of the study. Key words: ECER Agropolitan Agriculture Rural development Malaysia INTRODUCTION 18.7% to the national GDP. In 1995, the contribution of In the path of economic development from agriculture but it remained as the second largest sector in the to industrial movement, the agricultural sector of Malaysia economy. The contribution of the sector continued to has been declining with its share of GDP since 1975. decline to 8.9% in 2000 and then 8.2% in 2005. In 1970, the contribution of agriculture to GDP was 30.8% The usage of land by Malaysia’s agriculture also which is the highest among all sectoral contributions. continues to decrease due to the country’s rapid The contribution of the agriculture to the GDP accounted economic development, which occupies more agricultural 22.7% in 1975, 22.9% in 1980 and 20.8% in 1985, but it was land mainly for housing, business and industrial still the major contributor to the country’s GDP. In 1990, purposes. Since 1960 until 2005, the land use for industrial agriculture became the second largest sector contributing crops is increasing while it is decreasing for food crops agriculture to the national GDP further declined to 13.6%,