Start Your New Year Growing Vegetables

The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) advised Malaysians to start 2025 with growing their own vegetables. CAP believes that 2025 will be more challenging to consumers in terms of rising cost of living including price of food.

To reduce the burden of vegetable price increase, CAP urges consumers to grow any type of vegetables and herbal plants, beginning of the new year.

Teachers can play an important role in educating their students about environmental education. Environment is part and parcel of our lives as it concerns the surroundings which we live in.  We are facing climate change, heavy rain, storms, floods, landslides, and other environmental disasters due to natural phenomena and human activities.

But most of our younger generation especially students do not understand what is happening. Some children, and even adults think it is merely act of God. However human actions such as deforestation, urbanization, and inadequate infrastructure worsens the effects of natural disasters.

Teaching young children how to care for the planet is important. Some people may feel it is too much for young minds to process and can cause unnecessary worry in their daily lives.  Others may believe that now is the best time for children to learn how to care for the planet due to their curiosity and love for the outdoors.

Learning about environmental issues, conservation and protection of the environment should be fun for children.  They enjoy activities such as playing in fallen leaves and going to the park.

These activities provide an ideal opportunity to learn about the earth’s processes.

If you live in an urban area, you can start the conversation with topics such as air pollution and the ozone layer. Explain that the rise in big cities around the world directly contributes to the climate problem so that children understand how the earth got to this point.

For those who live in rural areas, it is easy to teach children about the processes of nature such as photosynthesis and how animals contribute to the life cycle of the planet. If the area is populated by farms, your kids will have a unique opportunity to learn about sustainability and farming.

Teach Kids about Gardening

If you take your child’s affinity for being outside and playing with soil, this is an opportunity to teach your child about gardening. They can learn the benefits of growing their own food. We can demonstrate how all vegetation grows, so not only will children be fascinated by the process of growing food, but they will learn a level of responsibility for the planet.

If gardening isn’t something that you can easily undertake due to time or space constraints, there are still ways that kids can learn about the process of growing plants. You can teach your children simple tasks that will enable them to learn how to conserve natural resources.

The sooner that children learn good habits, the more likely they will be to carry them into their everyday lives as they grow older. Children are the future of the planet and therefore have a significant impact on the fate of the earth.

Embracing your child’s interest in nature is a great starting point for giving them as much information as possible about how they can help to save the planet.  While nothing will change overnight, teaching your child little things can have a huge impact later.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projections indicate that feeding a world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70 percent between 2005/07 and 2050. Much of the projected increase in global food demand is expected to come from rising consumer incomes in regions such as Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The price of greens in Malaysia have been increasing in recent days and expected to continue.

Rain and floods are causing hardship to farmers who suffer losses. The climate crisis is also one of the causes of the steep rise in global hunger.

Many farmers contacted by CAP complain about their daily problems, including increasing price of farm inputs, unable to get workers and continuous rain that has damaged their drops.

As such, we are urging consumers to grow their own vegetables at home, which can be cost effective. Planting edible greens does not require much space.  Fruiting plants like okra, brinjal, chillies and leafy vegetables like sawi, kangkong, kalian, bayam as well as perennial plants such as mint, pegaga, kesum and selom could be easily grown, even on a balcony.

Commonly-used household items such as milk cartons, juice and drinking bottles, and other small containers could be used for plants which have smaller root systems like leafy vegetables.

For plants with deeper roots like okra, brinjal, chilly, items such as biscuit tins, five-litre oil cans and five to 20-litre water bottles could be used as growing containers.

With proper sunlight, water, healthy soil and compost, anyone can grow and harvest vegetables even in small places.  With the rising cost of living, growing your own vegetables, herbs and fruit can save money on your grocery bills and you can also teach children about where their food comes from.

Begin 2025 by sowing a seed for the future.

Fathima Mohd Idris
Vice President
Consumers’ Association of Penang

Press Statement, 31 December 2024