Paddy, rice and food security in Malaysia: A review of climate change impacts

Malaysia has focused its self-sufficiency policy on rice and paddy production, which are the country’s primary staple food and food crop. Throughout the Eleventh Malaysian Plan (2016–2020) and National Agro-Food Policy (2011–2020), Malaysia continues its proactive and progressive measures to promote paddy and rice sector development. The impacts of climate change, however, are projected to exacerbate challenges in increasing paddy yields and achieving food security in the future. Hence, this paper attempts to discuss climate change impacts on rice production and food security in Malaysia succinctly. Using Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope, our analysis exhibited the increased minimum (Tmin) and maximum (Tmax) temperature in the granary areas, ranging from 0.3°C to 0.5°C and 0.2°C to 0.3°C, respectively, in every decade. At the same time, precipitation has shown an increasing trend, ranging from 133 mm to 200 mm. Apart from the trend analysis, we conducted a literature review to substantiate our discussion. The findings signified that climate change poses a severe threat to paddy production, which eventually will affect food security as they are highly interrelated. Thus, it is high time for Malaysia to revamp its paddy and rice intervention strategies by giving due attention to enhancing the adaptive capacity of paddy farmers to cope with climate change.