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6 - Impact of COVID-19 on Singapore’s Rice Supplies, and Future Food Security Challenges
- Edited by Jamie Seth Davidson, National University of Singapore
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- Book:
- Just Another Crisis?
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 27 February 2024
- Print publication:
- 17 May 2023, pp 161-190
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Summary
Singapore imports more than 90 per cent of its daily food consumption. Imports are one of the four key “taps” on the supply side for meeting demand. The other three include domestic production, reserves and growing food overseas and re-importing it into the country. Within the island citystate, rice plays a crucial role, since it is a staple in the Singaporean diet. According to the country's 2010 National Nutrition Survey, rice and rice alternatives (e.g., wheat) composed the largest share of consumption requirements (44 per cent), followed by meat and meat alternatives (30 per cent), fruits (12 per cent), vegetables (12 per cent) and wholegrains (2 per cent) (HPB 2010). Despite rice's importance, Singapore relies purely on international sources to meet rice consumption requirements. This is because rice is a land-extensive commodity, requiring vast expanses of land that the city-state lacks.
The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, and it has been a significant disruptor to global health, with more than 450 million cases recorded as of March 2022. It has also disrupted the global economy, causing economic contractions that have not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This chapter presents policy insights for Singapore's food security in the face of COVID-19, learning from its experience in its rice sector. It is divided into three sections. The first section describes the policy context for food security in Singapore prior to COVID-19, describing the evolution of Singapore's approaches, including the investments in domestic production after the Global Food Price Crisis of 2007–8; the development of its Food Security Roadmap in 2013; the restructuring of its food authority, the Agri-Veterinary Authority and its transformation into the Singapore Food Authority announced in 2018; and the launching in 2019 of the “30-by-30” target of 30 per cent food self-sufficiency by 2030. This section highlights that across these transitions, Singapore has forgone attempts to boost domestic production and stayed the course of import reliance for rice, by focusing on diversifying foreign sources for rice, as well as other commodities.
3 - Southeast Asia’s Food Security: Inflection Point?
- Edited by Mely Caballero-Anthony, Lina Gong
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- Book:
- Non-Traditional Security Issues in ASEAN
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 24 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 04 March 2020, pp 67-93
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Introduction
Over the past decade, Southeast Asia was close to halving its undernourishment from 18.1 per cent of its population in 2005 to 9.7 per cent in 2014, or a reduction of 41 million people undernourished from as much as 101.7 million undernourished in 2005. This was largely from the successful initiatives that increased per capita income and reduced poverty across the ASEAN member states (AMSs). However, regional statistics show a potential reversal in these trends: over the past three years, Southeast Asia's undernourishment increased by 3 million from 2014 to 2016.
This coincides with the global situation, wherein global undernourishment increased for the first time in a decade from 2015 to 2016, by 19.8 million people, followed by an increase of 20.2 million from 2016 to 2017. It runs counter to the trend of falling global undernourishment which the world achieved in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, from 14.2 per cent in 2005 to 10.6 per cent in 2015.
These statistics are fuelling fears that the region, and the world over, could be seeing a new era of increasing food insecurity. This chapter therefore critically reviews the state of the region's food insecurity, focusing on the issue of increasing undernourishment, alongside an assessment of the national and regional gaps in addressing this issue. It then provides recommendations on how these mechanisms can be tweaked to better respond to this non-traditional security (NTS) threat.
Food Security Framework and Measurement of Undernutrition
Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as a “situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. Following this definition, the framework adopted by the NTS Centre in studying food security distinguishes four key facets. The first is food availability, whether there is sufficient food to meet demand, at the global, regional, country, and subregional/subcountry levels. This is primarily affected by factors which affect the production side, in terms of crop yields and land allocation for agricultural purposes.
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