ECON 1510

PRINCIPLE OF MICROECONOMICS

SECTION 1

OPTIMIZATION OF URBAN LAND USE FOR BASIC FOOD NEEDS IN SITUATIONS OF COVID-19 ISOLATIONS IN MALAYSIA

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

INSTRUCTOR:

MOHAMED ASMY BIN MOHD THAS THAKER

NAME : HUMAIRA ZAKIA FASYA (1720940)

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction to the problem

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global plan of action agreed by world leaders to end poverty, reduce inequality, and protect the environment. The SDGs include 17 objectives and 169 goals expected to be achieved by 2030 determined by the United Nations as the world development plan for the benefit of humans and planet Earth. Joint development until 2030. This goal is a continuation or successor to the Millennium Development Goals signed by leaders from 189 countries as the Millennium Declaration at UN headquarters in 2000. It has not been valid since late 2015.

Goals 2 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), End hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. After decades of steady decline, in 2015, the number of people suffering from hunger – as calculated by the prevalence of undernourishment – began to increase gradually again. More than 820 million people today routinely go to bed hungry, about 135 million of whom experience acute hunger due primarily to human-made wars, climate change, and economic downturns. At the same time, if we are to feed the more than 820 million hungry people and the additional 2 billion people the world will have by 2050, a profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed. To help reduce the dangers of hunger, rising agricultural productivity, and sustainable food production are essential.

2020 is a different year from the previous years; the problems that come day by day are increasingly complicated. The earth contents are like being shaken, especially with the coming of a disease that has never existed before, namely Coronavirus. A coronavirus is a group of viruses that can cause disease in animals or humans. Several types of Coronavirus are known to cause respiratory infections in humans ranging from cold coughs to more serious ones such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A new type of Coronavirus has been found to cause COVID-19.

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered type of Coronavirus. This new virus and a previously unknown condition before the outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease, which has no cure, is spreading to the corners of the earth. Many countries are overwhelmed in overcoming this virus—this Disease attack with a different percentage of deaths in each state. In Italy, the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak in Europe, the death rate at the end of March reached 11%.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Germany, the death rate from the same virus is only 1%. In contrast to China, the percentage is only 4%, while Israel has the lowest death rate worldwide, which is 0.35%. Also, We can see from this graph, and the cases are increasing day by day. On April 5, the Coronavirus’s highest incident was in Malaysia with 2,596 active cases, where the death rate was 1.67% of the total cases. There are currently a total of 9.7 million cases of Covid-19 in the world. Total deaths were 491,856, while healthy people were 5.2 million people.

The human aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic stretch well beyond the immediate response in health. They will affect all aspects of our future-economic, social, and developmental. Our response needs to be urgent, coordinated, and global and should deliver immediate assistance to those most in need.

This epidemic continues to make economic aspects decline in almost all affected countries, not a few companies out of business, or dismiss some of their caricatures to close existing liabilities. The ILO predicts that as many as 25 million people will become unemployed, with income losses of as much as USD 3.4 trillion. However, it’s already apparent that such figures can underestimate the impact magnitude.

According to the World Food Programme, the COVID-19 pandemic is putting an additional 130 million people at risk of suffering acute hunger by the end of 2020. With over a quarter of a billion people potentially at the brink of starvation, swift action needs to be taken to provide food and humanitarian relief to the most at-risk regions.

Covid-19, which continues to spread, raises severe problems at the end of this year. Countries issued several regulations that had never been made before, which requires all communities to isolate themselves in their respective homes. Like Malaysia, the continuous rise of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia has forced the Government to do the movement control order (MCO). For maintaining social distancing in comfort to fight the virus, a declining economy to a food hunger has increased because there is no financial income for some groups whose numbers are not as small. The example, The daily workers Dismissal, so they can not work, can not have even 1 dollar for a day, and you will have no adequate supply of food. So the economy decreases, and food hunger increases. Let’s not forget many “invisible communities” are not only at significant risk of contracting COVID-19 but worse than that.

In most countries, government assistance, even before Covid-19, has mostly prioritized the needs and welfare of citizens. Malaysia is different. The invisible community has been hit harder than other vulnerable groups mainly because they are silent, alienated, and mostly undocumented, making them most at risk during national crises. “Invisible community” refers to a particular group of people in society who generally include migrant workers, refugees, citizens without citizenship, and indigenous communities. They are described this way because they exist in a country without the proper identification given to them. As such, they are often abandoned altogether from vital legal services and are more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. ISEAS reports state that Malaysia holds 3.85 to 5.3 million migrants in 2018, including illegal workers who do not have documents while NGOs estimate nearly 8 million (Leng, 2018). The invisible community also applies to people without citizenship. Most of them have been in Malaysia for several years but have no significant access to the government’s facilities and assistance.

A pandemic influences people’s invisible food security because food security is not just a matter of putting food on the table. Food security mainly depends on food availability, access to food and nutritious diets, and appropriate food to ensure maximum nutrition and hygiene (AS, 2005).

The Covid-19 surge has extended MCO and restricted all levels of the business sector from operations. COVID severely impedes the invisible source of income for community members, mostly daily wages or odd jobs. Out of work and do not have money to buy an ample supply of food, they suffer from hunger and lack of access to food.

Unprecedented, expansive fiscal and monetary policy is essential to prevent the current decline from becoming a prolonged recession. We have to make sure people have enough money in their pockets to reach the end of the week – and so on. This means ensuring that the company – a source of income for millions of workers – can survive during a sharp decline and is positioned to restart as soon as conditions allow. There is no layoff because of this COVID-19. Therefore how do people get enough food for their daily lives? Can we finish this? How do we stay in the house a lot? Little to pay for staples?

The solution to Reach The Goal 2

Achieve goals 2 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. In this case, I am interested in optimizing land for agriculture, especially in the isolation era of COVID-19, to decreased food hunger. Covid-19, which continues to spread, causes quite severe problems in these new situations, which requires all people to isolate themselves in their respective homes to flatten the COVID-19 curve.

Urban Farming for food security, The first effort that can be done in the face of the current social distancing conditions and to remain able to survive, then it takes the initiative in the improvement of the consumptive pattern to the productive pattern. One of the efforts that can be done is to repromote urban farming or urban farming. According to the Central Statistics Agency, urban agriculture is a farming activity in or around the city involving skills, expertise, and innovation in food cultivation and processing. In urban farming, the products are limited to vegetable plants but can be either fish products or other farm animals.

Resilience in this situation explained that the condition of fulfilling food needs for households reflected the availability of adequate food, both from the amount and quality, safe, evenly, and affordable. Based on the definition and scope of the process, it can be concluded that urban farming actually can be an alternative in realizing food security, especially in the family scope.

Gradually, urban farming activities can erode the community’s consumptive patterns since the community will learn to produce food independently. The production process of one cycle of up to several cycles is a valuable educational process in the sphere of food security. That’s where patience, persistence, and self-reliance will be forged to be an influential person in the face of any situation. So if there is an SD or even lockdown, though, do not experience panic buying, because it has enough food reserves for 2-4 weeks.

Urban Farming through which maximized the field in front of the house or one house one pond (OHOP) is One of the urban farming activities that can be used as a manifestation of food independence at the family level is through the program. The term OHOP can briefly be interpreted as a one-house minimum program to have one productive fish pond. If the house has enough land, it can have a pool of more than one fruit. In its development, OHOP is not only for fish production, but it can be integrated with vegetable cultivation, thus becoming aquaculture (a combination of fish and vegetable farming). Some of OHOP’s advantages include

1. Save land because it can be applied in narrow ground,
2. water-saving because very rarely change the water,
3. solid height, with round pool diameter of 1 m can be filled catfish up to 1000 tails, indigo 100 tail, or Patin 50 tails per m3, which is cultivated to harvest,
4. without anti-biotic chemicals and produce hygienic products.

It can also be combined above the pond to cultivate various types of vegetables such as mustard, kailan, lettuce, spinach, kale, celery, and tomatoes. This concept can be used as an alternative to the development of urban farming because it is easy to apply and environmentally friendly.

The role of urban farming in social distancing is not only the fulfillment of food needs but can be recreative. The activity of feeding fish and seeing fish and plants can calm the mind. Urban farming is also instrumental in the fulfillment of family nutrition. Fish and vegetables are a source of animal and vegetable proteins that are needed by the body. Proper nutrient intake certainly will give good body immunity also for the body, thus minimizing the disruption of virus attacks.

It’s time for the Covid-19 outbreak to be valuable for joint introspection, especially as momentum in generating self-awareness to try out food self-esteem and healthy living through urban farming.

Urban farming is generally done to increase the income or activity of producing foodstuffs for family consumption. Still, at the moment, it is mainly urban farming to meet the needs of life. Another event that we can do in urban agriculture is for recreation to unwind because of activities that must always be at home. Also, urban farming can be used for plant earnings. During pandemic like Corona, Urban Farming So the solution has an income in the middle epidemic.

Therefore, to reduce food hunger and maximize activities to fill the free time in this pandemic, I took the initiative to create an application named “Go Urban Farming,” in which there is a way to optimize urban farming very well.

As we know, food hunger increased from day by day. This Application will open for the whole society. We have suggestions to meet the basic needs through urban farming by using applications that have been created from food hunger. This Application aims to be able to work, learn, understand each other between beginners, farmers, and people who focus on urban want to farming itself. That way, the app focuses not only on the daily staple food or reducing the food hunger alone but for the management and optimization of urban farming itself.  On the other hand, the Application is aimed at bringing together buyers and sellers, such as buying and selling online in general. With hope, this app can help human sesame people in need.

From this Application, we can make farming more fun, focusing on growing plants will make our bodies healthier while adding additional income. I hope that this Application will facilitate and reduce food hunger in Malaysia. These account works are accessible; users can register for free to become a member and get one seed for free, the choice to try the urban farming methods such as mustard and lettuce plants. From these plants, the user is asked to be able to follow the directions given. This Application will provide notifications every day that are sent to users to be organized.

We do training on how to grow crops, which is done once a month, which will be trained directly with professional growers. User logging into this account, the user is asked to report what has been done for his weekly evaluation. The question box has also been used to share with other users.

References

QA for the public. (n.d.). Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://www.who.int/indonesia/news/novel-coronavirus/qa-for-public

Coronavirus Cases. (n.d.). Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/

Pillar 1: Stimulating the economy and employment. (2020, May 07). Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/coronavirus/impacts-and-responses/WCMS_739048/lang–en/index.htm

Supriyatno, A. (2020, June 04). Social Distancing dan Kesadaran Urban Farming. Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://www.harianbhirawa.co.id/social-distancing-dan-kesadaran-urban-farming/

Ensuring Food Security for “Invisible Communities” during the Covid-19 pandemic – SHAPE-SEA. (2020, June 21). Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://shapesea.com/op-ed/covid-19/ensuring-food-security-for-invisible-communities-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

KumparanNEWS. (2020, May 17). Tren Pertumbuhan Kasus Virus Corona: Indonesia Naik, Malaysia Turun. Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://kumparan.com/kumparannews/tren-pertumbuhan-kasus-virus-corona-indonesia-naik-malaysia-turun-1tQB6v716uR