The role of rice in the food security of Asia

It was a pleasure to read an authoritative survey on food security recently. Peter Timmer is an Adjunct Professor at the Crawford School of ANU and was previously at Harvard.

Timmer's article, Food Security in Asia and the Pacific: The Rapidly Changing Role of Rice, is a survey of the changing role of rice in the food security of Asia, the behavioural dimensions of food security, and policy approaches.

Abstract

Timmer observes that food security in Asia and the Pacific presents a frustrating paradox. At one level, huge progress has been made in the past half century in bringing most of the population out of poverty and hunger. Measured by the key determinants of food security—improved availability, access, utilisation and stability—food security has never been at higher levels. Large pockets of food-insecure populations remain in the region, especially in South Asia, and continued efforts to reach these households are necessary. At the same time, food security strategies in Asia are mostly in disarray. Most countries are protecting their rice farmers and providing high price supports, but high rice prices hurt the vast majority of the poor. Continued efforts to stabilise rice prices are understandable politically and desirable economically, but much more open trade regimes for rice will help food security throughout the region.

Policy insights

First, despite its declining economic importance in Asia, rice remains the touchstone of food security in political terms. By and large, Asian governments define food security as a political concept by their ability to maintain reasonably stable rice prices in the main markets in their countries. The policies used to stabilise rice prices often include import and export controls on rice trade. Such controls can be effective, even for large countries, but they come with high external costs to the stability of the world rice market, which is also centred in this region. At the moment, there is no way to force these external costs to be internalised by the countries imposing them, and thus no effective way to prevent their use in the future. WTO negotiations to end export bans on food are unlikely to make much progress, although regional discussions within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for example, seem to have heightened awareness among both exporting and importing countries that more cooperation on keeping borders open is desirable.

Second, governments have good reason to fear the response of their citizens to a highly volatile rice economy. As noted above, governments that fail to stabilise food prices have failed in the provision of a quite basic human need that is rooted in behavioural psychology—the need for a stable environment. Behavioural economics is providing very helpful insights into why most people have a strong preference for stable prices—loss aversion is a powerful predictor of how people respond to changes in their circumstances. Accordingly, policy analysts need to help governments in the region design more efficient and effective rice stabilisation programs, rather than deny the desirability or the feasibility of doing so. Such programs will be put in place with or without our help. Perhaps, with better analytical input, these programs could be less costly, and especially could have fewer spill-overs to the world market.

Third, the direction of causation in the food security–political instability relationship remains unclear. The working hypothesis is that exogenous threats to food security—from a powerful El Niño, for example—directly threaten political stability in these countries, and government leaders understand that. Food security policies in the region are designed around that perception. It would be nice to know if it remains accurate.

Timmer, C. P. (2014), Food Security in Asia and the Pacific: The Rapidly Changing Role of Rice. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 1: 73–90. doi: 10.1002/app5.6