Food Security in Asia

With more than 60% of the world’s population, some of the fastest growing economies and only 37% of the world’s arable land and 36% of the world’s water resources, Asia’s food security challenges are formidable, to say the least. The region is currently home to six of the world’s top ten most populous countries and to half of the world’s urban population. It is thus no wonder that it plays a dominant role in the demand for global food production and inevitably in global food security. However, despite remarkable success in reducing poverty over the years, a strong agricultural sector and vibrant economic growth, pushing some Asian countries to middle income status, Asia still suffers from high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), over 60% of all the undernourished in the world, 578 million out of 925 million, live in this region with an overwhelming share (86%) belonging to middle income countries. The future is similarly disconcerting. Emerging trends occurring globally and regionally are changing the food security landscape in Asia and threatening further its ability to feed itself. Asia’s food security is under significant pressure from a variety of factors that include population growth and urbanisation, increasing affluence, the transformation of the agriculture sector, natural resource constraints, climate change, unsustainable trade practices and high and volatile food and oil prices. Regrettably, the effects of these trends endanger further the hundreds of millions of poor small farms that dominate Asian farming systems and the large number of rural households that depend on them for their existence. Small-holder farmers currently contribute roughly 25% of the overall global food production. However, they also constitute about half of the 1 billion people living in chronic hunger. In order to address the twin aims of poverty reduction and food security in Asia, governments need to urgently prioritise agriculture and make pro-poor investments, particularly if they wish to maintain stability and peace within their borders. With 80% of Asia’s poor still residing in rural areas, significant investments in agriculture R&D, extension services, smallThis report provides the summary of the main findings of the International Conference on Asian Food Security which was convened and organised by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) and the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) in Singapore on 10–12 August 2011. The meeting brought together experts from the public, private, civil society and academic sectors. The Conference programme was purposely based around the four basic dimensions of food security: food availability, physical access, economic access and utilisation with the added driver of investment. The aim was to present and examine a broader view of the range of issues involved in ensuring food security in the region, with a particular emphasis on the dependencies between rural and urban environments and to provide policy recommendations. The conference culminated with the ‘ICAFS Statement on Feeding Asia in the 21st Century’, which is summarised at the end of this report.

Improving food security in Asia through consumer-focused rice breeding

Reexamining Policies for Food Security in Asia

In the wake of recent food price spikes, plus growing demands for food in emerging Asia and for biofuels in Europe and the United States, governments are re-examining their strategies for dealing with both short-term and long-term food security concerns. This paper argues that long-run trends in real agricultural prices have policy implications for food security that are at least as important as those related to short-lived spikes around trend prices. The paper therefore summarizes recent projections of markets to 2030 under various scenarios, and then reviews evidence on how trade policy restrictions typically are altered to insulate domestic markets from short-run fluctuations in international prices around their long-run trends. That provides a firm empirical basis for re-examining the effectiveness and efficiency of various policy options for ensuring food security in Asia and elsewhere. Those options include boosting agricultural productivity growth rates to deal with long-run concerns, and using more-appropriate domestic policy measures rather than trade policies to cope with price volatility.

Despite declining contributions to Asia’s gross domestic product (GDP) and generation of jobs, agriculture continues to play an important role in preventing famine and reducing chronic undernourishment in the region. Its ability to ensure food security outcomes, however, is complex as hunger persists even if more food is available than is actually consumed, on a per-capita basis. Equal attention needs to be given to physical and economic access to food, as well as the way food availability and access are translated into nutrition outcomes. Climate change has played an important role in shaping agricultural performance, which links back to all of the crucial perspectives in food security. While climate change impacts on yields are expected to continue, and even worsen in significant parts of the region, these are compounded by competing demands for scarce water resources, rural-urban migration, food prices, and the growing demand for food in the long term. Regional approaches to food security will need to be transformed to keep up with the pace at which climate impacts are changing landscapes for food security in the region and globally.KeywordsFood securityAdaptationAgricultureTechnologyAsia

This chapter discusses agri-food supply chains in Asia from the perspective of ensuring food security, to provide consumers with their agri-food consumption requirements. Following this perspective, it takes stock of the latest food security outcomes in Asia with a focus on food utilisation (i.e. undernourishment), followed by a discussion of the key driving factors along the lines of food availability, physical food access and economic food access. These include challenges from climate change, as well as supply-chain disruptions from the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine. Moving forward, other regions globally can take a page from the various ways by which Asian countries (and its sub-regions) have been working to address food security challenges, building on four examples cited such as China’s state-led upstream interventions; India’s digitalisation of public distribution; Singapore’s state supported agri-food tech ecosystem; and private sector-led digitalisation in Southeast Asia.

The Causes of China’s Great Leap Famine, 1959–1961

PurposeThe study attempted to assess the food security status of urban agriculture households in Ghana and India. Also, the extent of urban agriculture participation and its effect on food security in Ghana and India were examined.Design/methodology/approachA total of 650 urban agriculture farmers were interviewed for this study in Ghana and India. Food security status of urban households was assessed by the use of the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, whereas the determinants of the extent of urban agriculture and its effect on food security were analysed by the use of the heteroskedastic linear regression and the Seemingly Unrelated Regression models, respectively.FindingsFrom the study on average, households in Ghana were mildly food insecure, but that of India was moderately food insecure. The results further revealed that various demographic, economic, institutional and health and nutrition factors differently influenced urban food security and urban agriculture. Also, the extent of urban agriculture participation positively influenced food security.Originality/valueSeveral studies in Asia (India) and Africa (Ghana) on urban food security have been geographically limited to New Delhi, Mumbai and Greater Accra, with few studies in the Middle Belt of Ghana, and Bihar in India. Besides, there is a limited, rigorous, empirical study on the effect of the extent of UA on food security in Asia (India) and Africa (Ghana) individually and together. Moreover, we extend the frontiers of the methodological approach by applying the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model to understand if the factors that affect food-security accessibility based on two food security accessibility tools are correlated.

Economic Reforms and Food Security

Food security in the face of climate change: Adaptive capacity of small-scale social-ecological systems to environmental variability

Climate change is predicted to adversely affect agricultural yields, particularly in Asian countries, where crop production heavely relies on environmental factors such as rainfall and temperature. However, there have been limited studies on the effects of climate change dynamics on food security in Asia, particularly at the household level. Consequently We conducte analysis of local climatic changes, the status of household food security, climate-related causes of food insecurity, food security determinants and the adaptation strategies employed by local farmers. The research revealed that the Climate change over the last three decades negitively impacted the food security status of households. Crop production faced constraints due to inadequate rainfall, severe erosion and rising temperatures. Additionaly factors such as unpredictability of rainfall, pests and diseases further contributed to the challenges. Using the calorie intake approach, 60.5% of sampled respondents were food insecure. Further analysis utalizing the logistic regression model showed that age and family size, as well as the amount of cultivated land and rainfall, were the significant (p < 0.05) factors influencing household food security status. A substantial proportion (69.8%) of farmers incorporated adapting strategies into farm management parctice. These strategies included improved use of crop varieties and livestock production, in addition to income diversification. Taken together, these findings show that improving climate change awareness, facilitating the participation of female-led households in income generation and strengthening existing adaptation measures have positive impacts on food security.

Food security has emerged as one of the most significant and complex challenges of the twenty-first century. The region has made impressive achievements in reducing poverty and hunger in the past two decades, driven by impressive economic growth and rising incomes over the last few decades. This progress has however been uneven within and across states, and the region remains home to over 60% of undernourished people in the world. The objective of the chapter is to examine the status of food security of Asian economies. For that purpose, we have assessed and taken into account food security situation according to various indicators across different regions of Asia as well as average food production as indicator of food security for our analysis. We then endeavor to find whether there is any convergence of average food production across Asian countries. Lastly, we have tested whether average food production is a significant determinant of undernourishment for Asian countries. The results reveal that there is no convergence in average food production in Asia. However the panel regression exercise reveals that there is significant relationship between food security and undernourishment.

Food security has emerged as one of the most significant and complex challenges of the twenty-first century. The region has made impressive achievements in reducing poverty and hunger in the past two decades, driven by impressive economic growth and rising incomes over the last few decades. This progress has however been uneven within and across states, and the region remains home to over 60% of undernourished people in the world. The objective of the chapter is to examine the status of food security of Asian economies. For that purpose, we have assessed and taken into account food security situation according to various indicators across different regions of Asia as well as average food production as indicator of food security for our analysis. We then endeavor to find whether there is any convergence of average food production across Asian countries. Lastly, we have tested whether average food production is a significant determinant of undernourishment for Asian countries. The results reveal that there is no convergence in average food production in Asia. However the panel regression exercise reveals that there is significant relationship between food security and undernourishment.

After the sharp food price increases of 2007–2008 food security has once again become a major issue of global concern. When that food price spike was followed by the global financial crisis of 2008, a large increase in the number of food insecure people in Asia was widely expected. But Asian countries managed to avoid such a sharp increase in food insecurity, even though sharp price spikes have recurred since then. In this paper we show how government policy measures largely insulated consumers from severe price increases and maintained food security, but note that this success came at a price. In particular, the global food trading system was weakened, producer incentives were further distorted, and policies that may impose high long‐term efficiency costs became more deeply entrenched. Major policy challenges need to be addressed to ensure Asia's food security over the coming decades.

Asia is the world's largest aquaculture producer. The aquaculture industry faces a multitude of threats ranging from microbiological and chemical to parasitic. These threats could potentially affect aquatic animal health and food safety and alter the consumer's perception of aquacultural produce. The development of antimicrobial resistance is also of increasing concern. These actual or perceived food safety threats could result in reductions in the food supply that adversely affect the food security of a country or region. Harmonised regional regulatory requirements, increased consumer awareness and the adoption of good aquaculture practices are ways in which the aquaculture industry can mitigate these risks. Together with the increased use of smart technology in production and encouragement to adopt certification and accreditation schemes, these tools can help the aquaculture industry in Asia to become more resilient in the face of such challenges. In this paper, the authors present an insight into the hazards faced by the aquaculture industry, which could potentially adversely affect food supply and hence food security, in an Asian context. The authors make several recommendations to mitigate these risks and thus safeguard against disruptions to regional food security.