Although the economies of its members are likely to expand after the Asean Economic Community is put in place next year, Asean food security still remains at risk, a food security expert suggests, The Nation reports.

“Once the AEC comes into place, a difficulty is that food security will become a national imperative. Many countries will try to maintain their own policies of food self-sufficiency.

“Such a policy would not support regional corporations very well,” Paul Teng – one of Asia’s leading food-security experts – told The Nation.

Teng is also a senior fellow for Food Security at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore.
He added that the AEC was forecast to increase connectivity among countries. Surely, this meant every country should work much closer together. But now it’s not happening enough in terms of cooperation on food security.