Agro Tourism Malaysia food supply chain

College students get insight into food supply chain
By Alicia Mun
Tuesday June 2, 2009

TAYLOR’S School of Hospitality and Tourism (TCHT) students went up to Cameron Highlands for a tour of the Consolidation, Processing and Packaging Centre (CPPC) of Malaysian Agrifood Corporation Berhad (MAFC) recently.

At the CPPC, they learnt about the food supply chain system that brings fruits and vegetables from the farms to retail outlets.

Giant marketing director Ho Mun Hao showed the students how tomatoes were sorted according to colour using a machine which has a built-in camera that captures the colour of the tomatoes to determine their ripeness. It also grades the tomatoes based on their weight. The machine is capable of processing up to four tomatoes per second.

The goal of the trip to Cameron Highlands during the fifth week of the Waste Not, Want Not programme was for the students to understand how the food supply chain works.

Waste Not, Want Not is a Green Project organised by The Star New Media in collaboration with Taylor's College School of Hospitality and Tourism (TCHT) and GCH Retail (M) Sdn Bhd, which owns the Giant outlets in Malaysia. It is also supported by StarMetro.

The programme involves getting TCHT’s culinary students to cook lunch for the students of two poor schools in Taman Medan and Puchong over six weeks.

The aim of the programme is to enlighten young people about food production as well as how to optimise food resources in an effort to raise awareness on the problem of food wastage that is rampant in our communities.

TCHT lecturer Siti Ismail said, "My students have been extremely receptive to the Waste Not Want Not programme. It has been a great experience for them as they got to learn about the food supply chain especially in terms of food production."

Other than visiting the CPPC, the culinary arts students got to have a look at the Controlled Environment Farms (CEF) greenhouses of MAFC in Tanah Rata. The greenhouse projects for tomatoes and lettuces are the first CEF in Malaysia.

"The CEF greenhouses help the farmers to achieve higher yield as well as better value-for-money products for the consumers," CEF general manager Ooi Gin Teng said.

"It also produces fresh and safe fruits and vegetables in a sustainable environment."

The beauty of the greenhouses is that the fruits and vegetables planted are of higher quality as the environment is controlled. CEF uses computers to detect the condition of the plants and provide them with only the amount of water and fertiliser that they need. Using this system, the greenhouses are able to save on fertiliser consumption as well as minimise the use of chemicals.

Farm manager Khairil Anwar said, "With CEF, we’re able to use the cocoa peat (coconut fibre and chippings) used to plant tomatoes for two cycles. Besides that, we also recycle the soil used for the lettuce plants into composite that can be used for other purposes."

Culinary arts student Nathan Wong, 20, shared that it was his first time at an actual farm and that the experience has been educational.

"I learnt a lot about the CEF greenhouses and the hydroponic method of planting fruits and vegetables," he said.

His classmate Muhamad Amsyar, 19, said: "This visit has shown me that there should be no wastage of food, even those with no commercial value because they can be used for stews or made into puree."

Watch the students learn their lessons in food production in the cool crisp air of Cameron Highlands on www.thestaronline.tv/switchup. -- The Star News.