One of the biggest issues faced by the world today is food security. There's simply not enough food to feed the growing population, especially when almost every emerging market is demanding more meat as part of their diet. And this increased demand for meat requires a lot of animal feed, which are mostly derived from corn meal, soy, agriculture residue etc. Roughly, an equal part of feed is required to gain an equal part of meat produce.

Corn demand in Malaysia as human food source will not be as high as in the US, but for animal feed, most definitely. China is investing heavily in Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines to plant two crops: Rice and Corn. It is expected that they (China) will require massive amounts of corn as part of their animal feed blend.

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Added on June 2, 2011, 9:31 am
There's always a way, one just need to find it. As with most other businesses, if you want to by-pass the middleman, you need networking with the right groups of people, and you need to ask the right questions.

To answer your question, it could be easy as pie, or it could be hard as hell; it really depends on what you are selling, when you sell it, and how you sell it. Right now, oil palm fruit bunches are hot items, and most people are willing to buy them, even under-ripe bunches are often accepted by some middlemen. I know of an old man who frequently walks around the Sabak Bernam-Teluk Intan coastal road with a jute bag. He collects the oil palm loose fruits that fall from the trucks transporting fruit bunches to the mills in the area. In a single day, he can easily collect up to RM50 worth of loose fruits, and the middlemen would gladly buy them from him. This is very different from not too long ago, when prices of CPO was going down the drain, no mill was willing to take the fruit bunches, even at the grower's cost price!

Actually, for one to participate in agriculture, one doesn't really need to own land, and nurture the crops themselves. It would be good of course, but as is often the case, not many people are blessed with such fortune. I'll give the example for oil palm and coconut.

One of the biggest problems faced by oil palm planters is the shortage of quality labor. I say quality, because quality is key in agriculture, and buyers/consumers are ruthless and unforgiving about low quality agriculture produce. That saying, harvesting the oil palm fruit bunches at the optimum ripeness standard and transporting them to the mill in time is crucial in ensuring low free fatty acid content in the resulting oil, low rancidity, and low losses in loose fruits. If one is able to provide such labor, most mid-sized to large plantations are keen to engage such entities, as contract harvesters. I'm not sure if the general practice has changed, but contract harvesters get about 20% of the FFB market price. Eg. if CPO prices are at RM3,000/mt, FFB prices are 20% of CPO prices (RM600/mt FFB), and contract harvesters' payment is about 20% of that (RM120) per metric ton of FFB harvested. If the plantation will give the contractor 40ha to harvest a month, and each hectare is able to produce 2.5 tons of FFB a month (about 30mt/ha/year), then in 1 year the contractor would have harvested 1,200mt of FFB, and earned RM144,000 in revenue.

Coconut is a lot more different. Yes, you could do contract harvesting from the larger plantations, but as far as I know, the contractor does not only provide the lent labor, but also purchases the coconuts that are harvested, at a fixed price. Example, a contractor contracts a 40ha field of high yielding coconuts. The plantations stipulates that each nut harvested by the contractor will be charged a fixed price of RM0.40 each for tender (drinking) nut, and RM0.18 for brown (old) nut. Given that the average yield performance of Malaysia's newer hybrid coconuts are about 15,000 nuts/ha/year (although better managed estates produce 25 to 30 thousand nuts/ha/year), and with proper agriculture practice, roughly 40% are brown nuts (60% tender nuts), the cost for the contractor would be RM144,000 + RM43,200 (RM187,200). Now I'm sure you guys know how much tender coconut sells for at restaurants and supermarkets; the contractor earns roughly 40% of those prices (less for hotels and certain restaurants). Considering the average price is around RM2.50, that would mean RM1.00 per coconut sold, or RM360,000 a year for tender nut. For brown nuts, two product can be obtained, which are the santan, and copra cake. Santan goes for about RM0.60 per 250ml, and 5 large brown nuts make 1L (RM2.40), so the revenue generated is RM115,000. The total revenue? RM475,200 in total. That's not inclusive of any revenue generated from selling the coconut fibre to nurseries, or the copra cake to animal feed producers.

I hope you can see from this lengthy write-up that participating in agriculture isn't as difficult, or as "dead beat" as it seems; nor is it difficult to find the right market with the right demand. It just takes a little more ingenuity, a little more resourcefulness, and some good marketing skills.