It is hard to make a decision in life. When I decided to further my study in Master’s level I never thought of coming to North Carolina State University aka NCSU. I was thinking to further my study in my home country. But when I applied for the scholarship through my employer, they proposed to send me to some other country so that I can have a diverse experience in agriculture. It is a big challenge when I know that I will be in a different country with so many different things that I have to learn. Not only with the different culture, weather, food and surrounding but I have to talk in a different language. So I can say that I am coming to a new world.
When I arrived here in August 2010, I heard some friends saying that the weather was so warm (30⁰C at that time), but to me it is just a normal day because I used to this weather when I was in my home country. We are having a hot and humid weather all year round, with an average temperature of 27 °C (80.6 °F). But when it is nearly comes to fall, I just love the weather in here together with the colorful scenery of the coming fall season. It is such a lovely experience that I don’t have in my home tropical country. Being here for more than 7 months now, I really appreciate my experience living in four season country. Of course it is quite challenging for me but I can see that agriculture sector in this country are more challenging than in my own country. With the changing of climate every three months in here, putting up well planned program are crucial to grower in order to make sure that their farm can survive during the whole planting season and produce can be harvested and deliver to the customer on time. Else some other option can be made to store those produce for processing or future usage.
In here agriculture sector are commercially own by farmers compare to my home country. Malaysia is just a small country compared to the US. Most of our farmers are coming from a small farm industry but lately there is a trend that younger generation have an interest in commercial farming. We do have some commercial farms and they are capable to export their product internationally. Most of our vegetable production are consumed locally and some are exported to our neighboring countries such as Singapore. Some of our tropical fruits such as pineapple, papaya, carambola are being exported to Europe, Middle East, China and some other countries. For the year 2009, Malaysia has been producing rice for 2,611,043 ton of 674,928 hectare, tropical fruits for 1,602,687 ton of 249,994 hectare and vegetables for 623,457 ton of 41,078 hectare. We do produce some field crops, herbs, spices and coconut. We produce a lot of rice because rice is our staple food. Based on the given figure, I can say that we are just a small producer compare to the US but some of our products have been accepted internationally and some of the growers have been certified by GlobalGAP. We do implement our local certification for Good Agriculture Practices (GAP) and now working towards traceability for our produce.
So it is just nice having an opportunity to further my study in NCSU, not only for having a great time studying in a prestigious university, but also having good experience staying in a four season country with an advance technology in agriculture.
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