Food Security, FTA and Trade Protectionism in Asian Countries

Abstract

Food security is the broad area of the food for the forth coming generation. Asia’s famous economic rise as the “global factory” over several decades was facilitated by outward-oriented development strategies and a multilateral approach, based initially on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and then its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). Free trade agreements (FTAs), as trade-policy instruments in Asia, were largely absent in the region’s trade policy architecture during Asia’s economic rise. Four main factors underlie the recent spread of FTA initiatives in Asia: (1) deepening market- driven economic integration in Asia, (2) European and North American economic integration, (3) the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, and (4) slow progress in the WTO Doha negotiations. Food security is mixed blessing because it is providing substitute domestic industrial and agricultural production and made a country more efficient for the production of particular product in international production for trade disruption and co-ordination failure.