Poultry keeper Zaiful Zakaria, 42, in Selama, Perak, began installing ventilation fans at his open-sided chicken sheds before the haze hit Malaysia in August. He sought to protect his mainly ornamental and heritage-breed chickens from accumulating heat. Later, Zaiful also installed a water-misting system, adding significantly to his operational costs.
Who Pays the Price
This year's haze crisis, combined with persistent heat, has intensified the struggle for livestock farmers across Malaysia and Indonesia. Small farmers in both nations are now spending more to ventilate their sheds, a direct financial burden on their already precarious operations. The cumulative strain from haze-related smoke, heat, water shortages, feed scarcity, and disease severely affects animal health, productivity, and the farmers' finances.
Industry groups and farmers confirm this compounding pressure. While it remains difficult to isolate the precise effects of haze from other factors like water shortages, feed, and disease, the outcome for these producers is clear: reduced output and increased expenditure. Zaiful's proactive measures, like those of many other small farmers, represent an individual attempt to mitigate systemic environmental pressures that directly impact their ability to generate income. These farmers are forced to absorb costs that erode their already thin margins, a direct transfer of environmental burden onto their labor.
Systemic Vulnerability
The current economic order leaves small-scale producers like Zaiful Zakaria acutely vulnerable to environmental shocks. They absorb the costs of climate change and industrial pollution, investing their limited capital in defensive measures simply to maintain production. This burden isn't shared by larger, more diversified agricultural corporations, which often possess the resources to weather such crises or pass costs onto consumers with greater ease. The struggle to maintain productivity amidst these challenges highlights how the system externalizes environmental costs onto the working small farmer, concentrating financial strain at the base of the supply chain. Their ability to produce is directly tied to their capacity to invest in mitigation, a capacity that is constantly eroded by these very pressures.
Farmers and industry groups alike report that the cumulative strain is severely affecting animal health, productivity, and their finances. The daily fight to keep animals cool, fed, and productive underscores the inherent fragility of livelihoods built within a system that prioritizes profit accumulation over ecological stability and the well-being of those who produce. The absence of collective, structural solutions means individual farmers must shoulder the financial weight of a crisis not of their making, further entrenching their economic precarity. This systematic underinvestment in small-scale agriculture, coupled with environmental degradation, ensures that the most vulnerable producers bear the brunt of the system's contradictions.