ASEAN Organic Agriculture Development Status

Data that I've just acquired yesterday at OAM Board meeting and wish to share with you. There are many assumptions that we can discuss based on the data provided below. But naturally, I'm more interested in the data from Malaysia.

For example, referring to Table 1 average size of the Malaysian organic farms is 20 ha/farm this is more than twice the size of average organic farms in Thailand which is only 8.6 ha/farm. Indonesian organic farmers have the smallest farm size, 1.7 ha/farm, followed by Cambodia, 4.4 ha/farm.

So what assumptions that we can make from these figures, it probably means Malaysia have huge size of agricultural land available but not many are willing to go into agriculture anymore or just simply that we don't know how to do organic farming. But again I might be wrong.

In Table 2 another depressing figures ahead of us. In both comparisons Malaysia is placed at the very last position. Sad huh...don't want to comment on this. I leave it up to your imagination.

Table 1: ASEAN Members Countries Organic Agriculture Development Status Comparison
Countries	Organic land (Ha.)	Share of total agricultural area	Number of farms 2006
Brunei	No information	No information	No information
Cambodia	1,451	0.003%	3,628
Indonesia	41,431	0.1%	23,608
Laos	No information	No information	No information
Malaysia	1,000	0.01%	50
Myanmar	No information	No information	No information
Singapore	No information	No information	No information
Thailand	21,701	0.1%	2,498
Philippines	5,691	0.05%	No information
Vietnam	21,867	0.2%	No information

Table 2: ASEAN Members Countries Organic Agriculture Development Status Comparison on World Position
Comparison 1: Organic agricultural land	Position (out of 131 countries listed)
Brunei	-
Cambodia	103
Indonesia	43
Laos	-
Malaysia	107
Myanmar	-
Philippines	78
Singapore	-
Thailand	55
Vietnam	-
Comparison 2: Share of agricultural land	Position (out of 122 countries listed)
Brunei	-
Cambodia	104
Indonesia	85
Laos	-
Malaysia	122
Myanmar	-
Philippines	-
Singapore	-
Thailand	81
Vietnam	70

Source: Willer, Helga; Minou, Yussefi-Menzler and Neil Sorensen. The World of Organic Agriculture: Statistic and Emerging Trends 2008, Eds. 2008. IFOAM and FiBL. Bonn, Germany