Alleviating Food Insecurity in Asia

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.18278/wfp.1.2.5
• Date: 01 September 2014
• Published date: 01 September 2014

89

World Food Policy - Volume 1, Number 2 - Fall 2014

Introduction: Asia’s food insecurity

problem

Despite signicant progress in recent

decades, food security remains a se-

rious concern for Asia. e rst rea-

son is the absolute size of Asia’s food inse-

curity problem. According to a recent FAO

report, summarized in Table 1, of the 868

million people estimated to be undernour-

ished in the world, 564 million, or 62 per-

cent of the global total, reside in Asia (Food

and Agriculture Organisation of the United

Nations (FAO) 2013). Undernourished peo-

ple constitute 14 percent of the population

of Asia, compared with 12.5 percent of the

world population. Of Asia’s malnourished

people, 297 million, or 35 percent of the

global total, are in South Asia alone, exceed-

ing the total number, 225 million, in Sub-Sa-

haran Africa.

A second reason is the dependence

of much of Asia on a single crop. Rice is

the staple food for most of Asia and for the

majority of Asia’s poor people expenditure

on this one commodity accounts for a large

proportion of their household budgets. e

important exceptions are parts of north In-

dia and Pakistan, where wheat is the staple

and parts of Eastern Indonesia, where it is

maize. is, together with the rst point

above, explains why Asian countries were

so greatly alarmed by the huge increases in

grain prices during the 2007–08 food price

crisis.

e global market for rice is particularly

thin, making international price volatility

more pronounced than for most other sta-

ple foods. In recent decades both supply and

demand conditions for staple foods have

changed rapidly in Asia. A growing middle

class has diversied its diet away from staple

cereals such as rice and towards fruit, vegeta-

bles and livestock products (Timmer 2014).

But at the same time rapid urbanization and

accelerating non-agricultural demands for

land have placed greater pressure on agri-

cultural resources. Finally, agricultural pro-

Despite recent progress, Asia has many more food insecure people than the rest of the

world combined. e prevalence of stunting and underweight in children far exceeds the

global average. Expansion of agricultural output within Asian countries themselves is

strongly associated with reductions in the rate of undernourishment. It is not sucient

to rely solely on aggregate economic growth or reductions in poverty incidence to reduce

food insecurity. But higher food prices increase the rate of undernourishment. e policy

imperative is to raise agricultural output without at the same time raising food prices.

Investment in the infrastructure and knowledge required to raise agricultural produc-

tivity achieves that objective. Agricultural protection does not, because the number of

food insecure people who are net sellers of food is exceeded by the number who are net

purchasers of food and for whom increased food prices mean greater food insecurity.

Keywords: food security, poverty reduction, food prices, agricultural productivity.

Peter Warr1

1 Australian National University, Canberra.

Alleviating Food Insecurity in Asia

90

Alleviating Food Insecurity in Asia

duction in much of Asia is especially vul-

nerable to climate change, requiring much

greater policy attention to the requirements

of agricultural adaptation (Nelson 2010).

Decades of international neglect of

agriculture have not helped. Between 1980

and 2005 total annual foreign assistance to

less-developed countries that was designat-

ed for agricultural development declined

from US$ 8 billion to US$ 3.4 billion, a re-

duction from 17 to 3 percent of total foreign

assistance to these countries. In the 1980s,

25 per cent of U.S. foreign aid went to ag-

riculture. In the 1990s, it was 6 percent and

in 2011 it was 1 percent. e share of World

Bank lending going to agriculture was 30

percent in 1978, 16 percent in 1988, and 8

percent in 2006. In many Asian developing

nations, public commitment to investment

in agriculture has also waned, as other de-

velopment priorities have seemed more

promising. e combined implication of

the neglect of agriculture is that continued

productivity growth in Asian agriculture, at

rates sucient to feed a growing population,

can no longer be assumed.

Undernourishment, poverty, and

growth

Undernourishment has declined at

widely varying rates in dierent

parts of the world, including coun-

tries within Asia. In Southeast Asia the ab-

solute number of undernourished people

declined over the last two decades by more

than 50 percent and East Asia (including

China) was not far behind, at 36 percent.

But the rate of decline was much lower in

South Asia, at 7 percent. As a percentage of

the total population, undernourishment de-

clined by 38 percent in Vietnam, 36 percent

in ailand, 11 percent in Indonesia, 10 per-

cent in China, 9 percent in India, and 7 per-

cent in the Philippines. ere may be many

reasons for the variation between countries,

but the dierences seemingly correlate with

dierences in rates of poverty reduction,

themselves correlating loosely with dier-

ences in rates of economic growth.

e relationship between under-

nourishment and poverty incidence is ex-

plored further in Figures 1 to 3, for the devel-

Table 1. Number of undernourished people (millions)

Region

1990–92

2000–02

2010–12

World

1,015.3

957.3

853.6

Asia

751.3

662.3

560.0

Central Asia

n.a.

11.6

6.1

East Asia

278.7

196.6

166.8

South Asia

314.3

330.2

297.4

South East Asia

140.3

113.6

69.7

Latin America

57.4

53.8

41.1

Sub-Saharan Africa

173.1

209.5

224.6



Note: n.a. means not available.