Meet Nasrun, the Perlis guy modernising paddy farming… using drones!

Imagine this: you want to find some place with nice kampung aesthetics for your #ootd photoshoot. Where else but Perlis, the northernmost part of Peninsular Malaysia?

So you drive over, imagining the wide open paddy fields with buffaloes and farmers hunched over the paddy, painstakingly dropping some tender loving care over their crop. However, today you might see a bunch of ominous-looking drones hovering over the paddy fields instead. Uh nuu has the robots finally taken over?

Taken over hard work, more like it. Because most likely…

These drones are actually farming drones that can spray, seed, and fertilise

Recently, while looking at announcements for the upcoming Budget 2023, we stumbled upon the story of Mohammad Nasrun Saad, a recipient of the Geran Khas Prihatin (GKP), a one-off financial aid for micro SMEs. And the kind he’s running is actually pretty impressive — using drones for agriculture. While this isn’t an entirely new concept in Malaysia, perhaps what’s interesting to us is how he managed to convince old farmers in Perlis to use his newfangled technology.

We called him up to find out more, and the first thing we learned is that… he’s single.

No, wait, hear us out. After graduating from UniKL with a degree in chemical engineering, Nasrun worked odd jobs, and some of them involved engaging with rice farmers. In around 2020, he partnered with a friend who’s in the drone business and together they decided to provide agricultural services – spraying pesticides, scattering seeds, and applying fertiliser – using drones.

“My starting capital was using the money I saved up for… what do you call it, marriage funds. So I’m not married yet. (laughs)” – Nasrun told Cilisos.

So his business, Aero Nord Solutions and Services, lifted off. In the beginning, he pitched the idea of drones to some of the farmers he knew, as well as set up a Facebook page to advertise. While he admitted that it’s a new thing for the farmers, seeing is believing, and many of them got interested after seeing the drones in action.

“In the beginning, the villagers don’t really know what this service is, as it’s a new thing. But when they see us working, they were like, can you do our fields next? So it began from there. A lot of our marketing is through word of mouth.” – Nasrun, to Cilisos.

After all, what’s not to like? Nasrun told us that if you decide to spray a paddy lot manually, it could take one person somewhere between 1 to 2 hours at best. A drone can do it in one-eighth of the time, with no back pain. And the manpower isn’t too demanding, either. For now, Nasrun’s team is handling orders with just two teams of three: one drone pilot, one helper, and one drone.

If you look at their Facebook page, it seems that they’re offering their services to more than just paddy farmers. Their customers include harumanis mango and kenaf farmers as well. However, just as business was starting to pick up…

The MCO forced them to lay low for a little while

As you may remember from earlier, they started sometime in 2020, which we may all remember as the Covid outbreak year. Business slowed down for Aero Nord as the Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced, as even though they are based in Perlis, they do have customers across the Kedah border in Alor Setar. Even customers within Perlis may live in different districts – yes, Perlis does have districts – and roadblocks hampered their mobility for a while.

So barely half a year after their business took off, they were in a bind. That’s when Nasrun came across a Facebook post from the Finance Ministry announcing the Geran Khas Prihatin (GKP) for micro SMEs – like really micro, applicants must not employ more than 4 people and earn less than RM30k in sales a year – and applied for it.

Thanks to that, Aero Nord managed to scrape through.

“The financial aid helped, as business was slow during the pandemic and we still have commitments and overhead costs to pay. The GKP mainly helped me patch up operating costs during that time.” – Nasrun told Cilisos.

Now that things are recovering, what about their business? Nasrun humbly says their business is progressing at a moderate pace. Although it was a novelty when they first introduced the service, agricultural drone operators aren’t uncommon anymore in their area, and they’re facing competition. Paddy fields are also diminishing, the land being developed into houses, and some farmers would prefer sticking to the traditional method by hiring other people from the village to do it manually.

However, they still have regulars keeping their business viable, and competition doesn’t mean the end of the world for his team.

“Now there are more competitors, but whoever gives the best service, they’ll get extra (customers)… but we still have our own regular customers, so we don’t mind too much. Business is moderate for now.” – Nasrun told Cilisos.

Still…

Despite the optimistic tone, Nasrun is still on guard against economic changes

When asked about his future plans, Nasrun plans to upgrade his existing drones to a newer model, and maybe one day branch out their services to other drone-related areas, like land surveying and mapping. However, he is cautious about the coming year.

“I feel that everyone had already tasted the effects of the pandemic. Perhaps 2022 is just the beginning, and we’ll only be in the real game starting 2023, due to external forces and the likes.” – Nasrun to Cilisos.

With the 2023 Budget season around the corner, he hopes that there will be more help announced for the rakyat, or at the very least for the existing government aid programmes to be continued. While he admits that he’s not that savvy with mathematics and economics to know whether the government can do that sustainably, he knows that for other small businesses such as his, even a small financial assistance or a few months of moratorium will help them survive to fight another day in this economic climate.

“My hope for the upcoming Budget is for more aid in forms of moratoriums, special financial aids and the like. Even a little bit will help, as we don’t qualify for other aids like BKM and such. This is what I’m trying to say.” – Nasrun told Cilisos.

Will the upcoming Budget 2023 answer the hopes of the rakyat like Nasrun? For now, we dunno either. What we do know is that the Ministry of Finance has been gathering suggestions from the rakyat, NGOs and businesses, and they’re promising that Budget 2023 will have targeted assistance for everyone. The Budget will be tabled on October 7th (Friday), so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for the highlights!