Brunei’s agriculture sector experience many challenges in expanding the local production to achieve self-sufficiency and requirement of the growing population and ensure the national food security. These challenges including the insufficiency of land, lack of irrigation infrastructure and limited sources of water for irrigation has causes low production of local productions especially rice. In spite of the fact that they can import the rice from other states, making the society to be self-sufficient may not be achieved. The Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism (MPRT), YB Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Haji Apong said that “Brunei currently has five to six percent of self-sufficiency in rice production, which is very low.” Certain area in Brunei had incomplete irrigation system or were completely reliant on rainwater. This could cause a problem for the rice production to grow.
   There was a report on Belait’s largest rice farm in Lot Sengkuang spanning 300 hectares suffered from an outflow of farmers due to harsh, dry weather conditions that exposed the lack of irrigation infrastructure in the area. According to MPRT, the biggest challenge in increasing rice yield is the high acidity of soil, considered that lack of natural sources of irrigation is also a factor. The minister also mention that the local farmers are facing many challenges such as unpredictable weather, lack of capital and competition from neighbouring countries. Furthermore, unemployment in agriculture sector had increase its rate ever since oil and gas industry produced more wealth to the country and the workers as well. There was an entrepreneurs mentioned that Brunei citizens are unwilling to take low-paid, unskilled work. From here, we can assume that the citizens are more focus on a good salary instead of working hard, improving their own country’s food resources. On top of that, Brunei has high dependency on foreign farm workers and limited number of experts for conducting research and development activities. Moreover, the involvement of the youth in agriculture activities is unaware among young people. Based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2019 country report, it shows that youth unemployment in Brunei poses a concern and needs to be addressed, which is now the highest among ASEAN countries. The report stated that the youth unemployment rate rising from 29.9 percent to 31.7 percent. This is indeed a serious problem because the lack of involvement to young people may lead to skill attrition, outward migration of skilled labour and erode social cohesion and institutions. The nation’s future depends on the young generation as they play an important role for development of the country.
   Brunei’s gross agricultural output had increased by 56.65million to 436.30million in the last year due to initiatives taken by the government. One of the major problem in Brunei was their rice production. Even though Brunei is nearly self-sufficient in vegetables, only 1 percent of the nation’s rice is being produced locally, the rest was mostly imported from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. So in order to improve this problem, one of the ways was the Brunei government announced a new 500-hectare, well equipped, commercial rice field in Kandol, located in Belait’s inner, rural south. Once operational, this rice field in the Belait district will become the nation’s largest commercial paddy field that will further boost their rice production. Killing two birds with one stone is definitely a perfect phrase to describe the solutions provided by this new rice field, because not only the production of paddy is expected to help the country meet its rice self-sufficiency target by 2020, it also solves the irrigation system problem in the previous 300-hectare Lot Sengkuang rice field in Labi.