Malaysia spends over RM1 billion importing onions every single year. For decades, it was assumed that our local soil and climate were fundamentally hostile to the crop, making it cheaper to rely entirely on foreign manpower and imports. Shahrizal Denci is stepping into that massive market gap to prove that assumption wrong. As the founder of Bantu Tani, an agricultural social enterprise based in Sabah, he is building Malaysia’s first comprehensive onion ecosystem from scratch.

After completely failing his first two crop cycles, Shahrizal partnered with MARDI to refine the growing model to successfully cultivate the resilient BAW2 shallot variety. Today, Bantu Tani has produced over 200 tons and developed a high-margin seed that harvests in just 70 days. Backed by a RM2.4 million grant from the Ministry of Economy, they are currently expanding across 40 acres, and building critical post-harvest infrastructure—after discovering that a lack of proper drying houses was initially causing a 20% loss in their harvests.

Shahrizal joins us to discuss their journey; how a 40-hour bus and boat trip to Sulawesi, Indonesia solved their drying bottleneck, and how their farm is actively helping rural communities earn over RM2,000 a month while pushing Malaysia toward its 2030 goal of 30% self-sufficiency.