Revisiting Food Reserve Policies and Practices: Recent Observation from Asian Countries

Ensuring stability in terms of availability, access and utilisation of food has long been a central concern for national governments, and more recently global multilateral institutions concerned with food and agriculture. There are many paths to ensure food stability for countries. International food markets and trade have been considered as one of the most efficient ways especially after 1970s. Similarly, pursuing self-sufficiency policies and ensuring the production of all required food within the country has been another strategy of choice. However, neither has proved to be successful or efficient, all of the time, in the past. In the aftermath of the world food (price) crisis in 2007/2008 and 2011 when the international food markets were extremely volatile even in the absence of any major disruptions in world food production, governments have been revisiting one of the oldest strategies to ensure greater stability, that of maintaining food stockpiles. Countries which have adequate food stockpiles can weather global food price shocks, local supply shocks from failed harvests, income shocks (from economic downturns or exchange rate shocks), disruptions in trade due to export bans, as well as during times of emergencies and calamities. This research asks to what extent and how food stockpiling can help stabilise, build resiliency, and allow for a more robust national food security? This paper is based on the findings from the field work in Asia (India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore).