KUALA LUMPUR - Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawiyesterday directed Felda to make the most of the country’s biodiversity tocreate new wealth generating opportunities for settlers of existing landschemes and new ones to be opened.He said the government had already discussed a report on how Felda couldapply new farming technologies when opening new land schemes.“It is not our intention to do away with rubber and oil palm estates whichhave been the impetus of our economic development.“But we are convinced that Felda can be directed towards that end bymaking the most of the abundant biodiversity and applying latestdiscoveries in farming technologies,” he said in addressing 1,600 Feldastaff during his visit to the agency’s headquarters here.For instance, he said, a recent discovery that oil palm trunks can beturned into timber planks should motivate Felda to become the supplier ofsuch raw material when felling old oil palm trees for replanting.The agency could also capitalise on the latest discovery that land schemematerials presently gone to waste could be recycled as pharmaceutical andcosmetic by products for enrichment of the settlers, he said.Abdullah said the new vision for national agriculture was to injectdynamism in farming activities that should go beyond the mere opening ofrubber and oil palm estates and bringing in settlers there.Felda need not stick to such old approaches but instead concentrate onapplying new ones, he said.It could get the existing settler community to be involved through equityownership and as workers in modernising rural areas and elevating villageliving standards, he said.“The farming sector has immense potentials but tapping them should bebeyond planting oil palm for palm oil only,” he said.Abdullah said he was convinced that efforts to tap these potentials wouldeventually lead to a better quality of life for Felda settlers.“As such the possibility of the new generation of Felda settlers becomingpioneers of urbanisation in the 21 century simply cannot be ruled out,” headded. —– BernamaFriday, August 31, 2001The Star