Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's fascination for agriculture and his desire to make it as the engine of growth of the country should be lauded.

The PM never said that already advanced sectors, like the electronic industry, should be forgotten. His intention is that agriculture should be developed pari passu with the other industries, which we are already established in their areas and good at what they do.

The problem though is that the mention of the word agriculture provokes an image of a buffalo pulling a plow and a middle-aged man steering the implement behind just to sustain his subsistence way of life.

This is definitely not the agricultural development the PM has in his mind. What he envisions is the involvement of highly skilled individuals, agricultural scientists, agro-business managers, biotech scientists and technicians and the application of cutting-edge technologies in the research and development and the production and marketing of agricultural products.

Our country is so blessed with fauna and flora, many of which have not yet been researched upon. Just our orchids, many are yet to be named. Imagine the economic potential of this if we could clone them by the millions per month and sell them at RM5 each. It's an industry worth billions! And the medicinal values of our plants have yet to be tapped. These are gold mines yet to be mined.

Look at our maritime products - fishes, prawns, lobsters, seaweeds. They are all money spinners. Imagine if we can produce 100 million spotted grouper fries a month and sell them for RM15 each - that's more than RM15 billion a year. Perhaps through our R&D, we could find a way to breed lobsters, who knows. Lobsters are selling up RM90 to RM100 per kilo.

In the future air travel could be 10, even 40, or even 100 times the speed of sound. And with cheap cell fuel, air travel and cargo will no longer be expensive. Transatlantic travel could only take one or two hours. Hence our agriculture products can be delivered fresh to consumers in other countries fast.

We have done very well in oil palm and rubber. Products based on both these items can be found in every nook and corner of the world. We can do the same with our other agriculture products.

Recently, I attended a seminar on the health benefits of oil palm by two of our Malaysian scientists involved in oil palm research. Both of them are non-bumi. They were very passionate with their work and the product.

They have fought for our country in the international fora against advanced countries such as the US which has strong lobby against our oil palm industry. These two scientists gave the impression that they will fight to the end for the sake of our country in this regard.

These two fine Malaysians, who happen to be non-bumi, are real Malaysian patriots. They have embodied every gossamer of patriotism, in this case for our beloved Malaysia.