The Impact of Macroeconomic and Environmental Factors on Food Production in Malaysia: An ARDL Analysis

Production of food is essential in ensuring the food security of a nation, depending on the economic situation and changes in the environment. This paper seeks to establish the impact of macroeconomic factors as well as environmental factors on food production in Malaysia from 1988 to 2022. The main objectives of this paper include establishing the effect of food imports, inflation rate, temperature, and agricultural land on food production in Malaysia. The stationarity tests show that the variables have different orders of integration, while the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test establishes a long-run cointegrating relation. The study finds out that food imports, temperature, and agricultural land significantly affect long-run food production. These findings illustrate the policy implications of macroeconomic factors, particularly food imports, as well as environmental factors, namely temperature and agricultural land, on food production in Malaysia.