Abstract

This seminar is based around a draft chapter of a forthcoming book on ‘Malaysian Agriculture in Transition’, involving Malaysian contributors and Colin Barlow. The seminar examines the development of Felda settler schemes over 6 decades from the late 1950s to the present, and of Felda Global Ventures (FGV) operations over the last decade. The seminar first scrutinizes the evolution of schemes and FGV in response to social, political and economic pressures, examining key features of accompanying changes. It then addresses the following critical issues: (i) inherent tensions for settler schemes in both securing technical advances and satisfying community needs; (ii) changes in the goals of schemes with ageing settlers and outmigration of younger people; (iii) the objectives of FGV, and the merits of this particular route to reaching commercial profit-making objectives; and (iv) the political significance of the Felda settler scheme/FGV ventures in the Malaysian national scene. The seminar will finally look to the future, and to the position of these ventures in the Malaysian national and international contexts.

 Biographical Sketch

Dr. Colin Barlow is the CEO and operations manager of an Australian NGO, the Nusa Tenggara Association, Inc., which has worked on rural development in eastern Indonesia for the last 25 years. He has also been closely involved for many years with oil palm and rubber, and especially with small farmer land developments, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. He is a visiting fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University, Canberra. His recent books on Malaysia include The World Rubber Industry (Routledge, 2010, with S.K. Jayasuriya and Tan Suan) and Malaysian Politics and Economics in the New Century (Edward Elgar, 2003, editor with Francis Loh Kok Wah).