Eurasia Review
17 May 2016
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- Food Prices: A Double-edged Sword – Analysis
Food Prices: A Double-edged Sword – Analysis
The recent phenomenon of food prices declining over the past five years is like a double-edged sword to food consumers globally.
Some progress has been made over the past 25 years in eradicating poverty and hunger – an overarching development goal of many countries globally. In ASEAN, malnutrition has been reduced to just 7.6% of the total population. In line with the Millennium Development Goals, six ASEAN countries – Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – have already halved hunger from 1990 levels. Other countries are following suit. Looking forward, an even more ambitious goal has been set in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): zero percent hunger, globally. The challenge, however, will not be so easy to meet.
The common notion nowadays is that future food scarcity is imminent, given trends of growing food demand, and declining food production yields as a result of climate change. We posit here that these are not the only key determinants of food security outcomes. Rather, market dynamics have an important part to play too.
… Jose Ma. Luis P. Montesclaros is Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University and Mely Caballero-Anthony is Associate Professor at RSIS and Head of the NTS Centre.
NTS Centre / GPO / Online
