Rural transformation: a lesson learned from agropolitan development programs in Malaysia

Abstract

Since last decades, the Malaysian government has applied a commendable path in transforming its socio-economic landscape and the lives of the locals, in line with its vision to become a developed region by 2020. The paper explores rural transformation implementation by presenting the socio-economic development parameters of rural poor based on agropolitan project in the East Coast Economic Region (ECER) of Malaysian Peninsula. This agropolitan project is aimed to boost positive socio-economic alteration among the poor people through commercial-agriculture related activities. The case of this research are two agropolitan projects located at Batu 8 Lepar and Runchang located in Pekan, Pahang and one agropolitan project in South Kelantan located at Gua Musang. The research conducted, aimed to explore incomes achievement and three nexus of agropolitan development goals based on economic-physical-human development accomplishment. As many as 254 agropolitan participants were selected as respondents for the questionnaire survey. The main objective is to explore their experiences after joining the projects. Mixed method approach used in this study found that agropolitan projects have given remarkable transformation to participants’ life and rural development programs as a whole. Nevertheless, despite its achievement, challenges recognized by participants remain immense especially in transportation provision, technical difficulties caused by animal threat and human capital improvement. These should be addressed in more depth by Agropolitan related agencies.