Padi and Rice in Malaysia: Farmers, BERNAS, and the Self-Sufficiency Gap

Rice is the one food Malaysia refuses to leave to the free market. The state concentrates where it is grown, cushions the farmers who grow it, licenses a single company to import the shortfall, and holds an emergency stockpile against supply shocks. Yet after decades of this arrangement, the country still grows only about half the rice it eats.

That headline number — the rice self-sufficiency level (SSL) — was 52.9% in 2024 and has stayed near 52% for years, according to Agriculture and Food Security Minister Mohamad Sabu. This page connects the parts that produce that number: how rice is grown, how farmers are supported, who controls imports, and the policy targets the whole system is measured against.

Why does Malaysia only grow about half its rice?

The self-sufficiency level is the share of the rice Malaysians eat that is grown at home. At 52.9% in 2024, nearly half of national consumption is still met by imports — and the figure has been broadly stagnant.

The minister has attributed the stall to a stack of structural drags rather than a single cause:

• Shrinking padi areas, and slow development of new padi land in the southern states (Melaka, Johor, Negeri Sembilan) and in Sabah and Sarawak.
• Insufficient irrigation and low yields.
• Rising input costs.
• Climate change.

Each pressure works against the others: less land and lower yields cap how much extra rice existing farmers can produce, while higher costs make expansion less attractive — so billions of ringgit in support have kept the sector alive without moving the self-sufficiency needle far.

The official measure itself comes from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), which tracks self-sufficiency ratios for agricultural commodities in its Supply and Utilization Accounts (SUA) series. The latest edition, covering 2020–2024, was released on 15 December 2025. That series also shows national milled-rice production sliding over the period — roughly 1,514,900 tonnes in 2022, 1,439,130 in 2023 and 1,362,100 in 2024.

Where is Malaysia’s rice actually grown?

Most of Malaysia’s rice comes from designated granary areas — the officially recognised kawasan jelapang padi. There are 12 granary areas in all: 10 in Peninsular Malaysia, plus one each in Sabah and Sarawak. Each is a large, irrigation-served zone managed by a dedicated agency so that water, seed and marketing stay coordinated.

According to the Department of Agriculture, the principal granaries are:

Agency / scheme	Location	Notes
MADA — Muda Agricultural Development Authority	Muda (Kedah / Perlis)	The country’s largest granary — about 48% of national padi (roughly 843,947 tonnes in 2021)
KADA — Kemubu Agricultural Development Authority	Kemubu (Kelantan)	Major granary in the east — about 9% of national padi
IADA — Integrated Agricultural Development Areas	Barat Laut Selangor, Kerian, KETARA, Seberang Perak, Pulau Pinang, and others	Regional granary schemes; IADA Barat Laut Selangor alone contributes about 8%

Together these areas form the backbone of national production. Concentrating output in a handful of irrigated zones is what makes the padi crop governable — support, pricing and buffer-stock policy can all be applied through a small number of agencies rather than across scattered smallholdings. The government is separately developing new major granary zones in Sabah and Sarawak, which currently account for only about 3–5% of national output.

How are padi farmers supported?

Growing padi in Malaysia is kept viable by government support rather than by the open market alone. That support flows through several channels. The padi floor price (harga lantai belian padi) was raised to RM1,500 per metric tonne, up from RM1,300, effective 16 February 2025 — the latest step after Budget 2024 had lifted it from RM1,200 to RM1,300. On top of the guaranteed price, the Padi Price Subsidy Scheme (SSHP) pays farmers an extra RM500 per metric tonne (raised from RM360), while the padi production incentive (SIPP) pays RM160 per hectare through service providers and machinery owners. In Budget 2024 the government allocated about RM2.6 billion for subsidies and incentives to padi farmers and fishermen combined — a roughly RM600 million increase — and Budget 2026 raised this to a record RM2.62 billion.

The scale of state involvement is visible in the concrete figures that are on the record:

• The government has spent about RM1 billion in the MADA area alone, the country’s largest granary.
• BERNAS, the licensed rice importer, provides RM3.2 billion to fulfil ten government-imposed social obligations. These include RM90 million in farmer assistance in 2025 and RM13 million distributed from rice-import profits, according to Deputy Agriculture and Food Security Minister Chan Foong Hin.

The system is also priced with affordability in mind at the consumer end: a six-month ministry study found that about 15% of Malaysians need rice priced around RM26 for a 10kg bag, underscoring why price control sits alongside farmer support in the same policy.

Who controls rice imports, and why one company?

Because local supply is not enough, imports fill the gap — and imports are deliberately funnelled through a single gatekeeper. Padiberas Nasional Berhad (BERNAS) holds the concession as Malaysia’s sole rice importer, importing on behalf of the government to offset local production deficits and to meet food-security stockpile requirements. BERNAS is required to manage and maintain 290,000 metric tonnes of rice reserves at any one time, operating through 31 rice stockpile warehouses nationwide — a broader obligation than the roughly 200,000-tonne national buffer (government) stock component. The bulk of those imports is sourced from Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, India and Myanmar.

The arrangement has deep roots. It traces back to the National Padi and Rice Board (Lembaga Padi dan Beras Negara, LPN), established on 20 October 1971, which became the sole rice importer in 1974 after the world food crisis. LPN was incorporated as Syarikat Padiberas Nasional on 7 July 1994, privatised as Padiberas Nasional Berhad (BERNAS) on 12 January 1996, and listed on Bursa Malaysia on 25 August 1997. The transfer of LPN’s functions and assets was effected under the Lembaga Padi dan Beras Negara (Successors Company) Act 1994.

That single-importer model is not permanent. The concession expires in 2031, and Deputy Minister Chan Foong Hin has said the government will review BERNAS’s role before the expiry. The review is where two things are weighed against each other: the efficiency case against a monopoly importer, and the social obligations — buffer stocks, farmer assistance, buyer-of-last-resort duties — that the monopoly currently funds.

What are Malaysia’s self-sufficiency targets?

The number that judges the whole system is the self-sufficiency level, and policy sets it well above today’s reality. Under the National Agrofood Policy 2.0 (Dasar Agromakanan Negara 2.0 / DAN 2.0), which covers 2021–2030, Malaysia targets:

Milestone	Rice self-sufficiency target
Current (2024 actual)	52.9%
By 2025	75%
By 2030	80%

The distance between the 52.9% actual and the 75%-by-2025 target is the core tension of the whole industry: the policy ambition has not moved production, because the structural drags — shrinking land, low yields, rising costs and climate stress — have not been resolved. That is why the sector remains one of the most heavily supported and tightly regulated parts of Malaysian agriculture.

What’s next

• Track the annual SSL in the DOSM Supply and Utilization Accounts and the Ministry’s statements — it is the single headline measure of whether the import gap is closing.
• Watch the 2031 BERNAS review, which will decide whether the sole-importer concession is renewed, restructured or opened up, and what happens to the social obligations it funds.
• Confirm the remaining figures flagged in verificationNeeded — exact padi planted area and production tonnage, and the registered-farmer headcount — against DOSM and KPKM primary sources before citing them as settled.