The Indonesian government’s recent endorsement of food sovereignty as its formal policy framework signals a turn in food policy discourse in Southeast Asia. Is this helpful or a disruptive development?

Food sovereignty , as opposed to food security, has recently been adopted as a formal policy framework by the new Indonesian President, Joko Widodo (Jokowi). In his Facebook page, Jokowi recently posted: “Food security is different from food sovereignty. Food security is simply the availability of foodstuffs (logistically) in warehouses and in the markets regardless of the origin whether from import or from locally produced. Food sovereignty means we produce and market our foodstuffs ourselves, while the surplus of agricultural crops is exported.”

Extrapolating on the external dimension, Jokowi said: “If we are sovereign in our food production, any disturbances abroad will not have a significant impact on our food reserve and we can still have adequate supply to feed our people.” Stressing the government’s firm commitment to food sovereignty, he added: “Our food sovereignty vision at the highest level is for our food production to overflow the local and international markets or at the very least, we have to be the largest food producer in ASEAN.”

…Jonatan A. Lassa and Maxim Shrestha are researchers with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.