As food security comes into sharper focus this pandemic, paying attention to the challenges of smallholders may be the best way to identify and ...
The tenuous balance of food security in Asia – and Southeast Asia in particular – is heavily dependent on regional growers’ access to fundamental farming raw materials such as quality feed, seeds, crop protection products and fertilisers.
Virtually every day there are new reassurances from governments and policy-makers across the region that an ample supply of food will continue to be available and provisions are in place to meet consumer demand. Growers in India and Malaysia have been forced to essentially dump vegetables and fruits as a result of transport disruption in the food supply chain.According to a Business Council for Sustainable Development Singapore 2016 paper, of the roughly 520 million smallholder farmers around the world, nearly 85 per cent of them call Asia home and around 100 million live within Southeast Asia.
Just last year, the crucial monsoon rains many of Southeast Asia’s farmers depend on arrived months late. This spurred a severe drought – leaving the Mekong River at its lowest level in 100 years and area rice farmers unable to plant their chief crop. Without crop protection products alone, it’s estimated 40 per cent of global rice and corn harvests could be lost every year and losses, while losses for fruits and vegetables could reach as high as 50-90 per cent.
As Singapore Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing rightly noted in his recent address to Parliament, ensuring the national stockpile is at an adequate level is a “dynamic task that requires constant watch over the fluid global supply landscape”.
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