The ASEAN and Food Security

Abstract

The concept of food security first originated in the World Food Conference in 1970, based on Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations or FAO’s idea of 4 dimensions of food security as follows: food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food stability. This also covers food safety, food nutrition, and self-sufficiency. The studies state that ASEAN in the overall look is quite fertile. Rice production, considered as the main food crop, is higher than consumption as well as other food crops, vegetables and fruits, livestock, and fish which are produced over consumption. Accordingly, ASEAN seems to have food self-sufficiency and food security within the region. However, in the national level, there is a gap between countries posing conflicts toward one another. In the region, Thailand and Vietnam are the main rice producers and exporters while the world’s main rice importers are Malaysia and Singapore. This indicates that ASEAN is about to face food security problems in the future which are food unavailability, food accessibility and food self-sufficiency. Moreover, ASEAN’s food security opens to risks from climate change, global energy crisis, population growth and less production of food crops in contrast with higher production of energy crops which results in increased prices of food crops that are unapproachable for the poor. These factors all affect the region’s food security and food sustainability.