The Russian invasion of Ukraine has severely disrupted the global supply of wheat as these two countries produce a quarter of the world’s supply. — Bloomberg
There is a shortage of food all around the world for three main reasons.
One, the Covid-19 pandemic continues to reduce food production and logistics because farmers, fishermen and truck drivers are still falling sick from this disease.
Two, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February (2022), as both countries make up a quarter of global wheat production.
Wheat is used to make bread, flour for noodles and feed for cows.
The invasion also increased the price of natural gas, from which ammonia is produced.
Ammonia produces fertiliser, which is used in food production.
And three, there have been many climate-related crop failures this year alone to date, like droughts in East Africa, Spain and Portugal, floods in Australia, and heatwaves in India, Argentina and Brazil.
This food shortage is very concerning for the obvious reason that we need food to survive.
But food shortages have a significant health impact, potentially causing stunting, malnutrition, weaker immune systems, anaemia (low levels of red blood cells, which can result in fatigue and weakness), anxiety and other health concerns.
Every government around the world is currently worried about food security.
However, there are useful policies that can help with this issue that governments can implement, which this column will describe.
Just to note: policies that are not helpful include advising citizens to eat less, or issuing flippant statements like “food shortages are good to help us lose weight”.
Unhelpful policies also include blaming foreigners for taking up food subsidies, as xenophobia can’t solve a food shortage.
On the other hand, there is a range of helpful policies that can be implemented with four main aims:
- To increase food production
- To reduce risk of shortages
- To reduce wastage, and
- To provide emergency support where necessary.
Increase production
There is no easy way to increase domestic food production in the short term, but we have to institute measures to increase domestic food production in the long term.
As it is, Malaysia imports RM55 billion worth of food every year, and this puts us at the mercy of global events.
Malaysia is a country blessed with abundant sunshine, rainfall and fertile soil, and we should aim to be self-sufficient in food.
In this respect, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi now seems prescient when he advocated for better agricultural practices and investment during his tenure as Prime Minister (2003-2009), although his policies suffered from derision from voters and businesses for not being fancy, digital or innovative.
Increasing local food production requires a basket of solutions, such as increasing research and development in agriculture, adopting precision agriculture with better pesticides and fertiliser management (and drone technology), and adopting climate-smart agriculture with higher-yield crops that use less water.
Modern farming and irrigation techniques are needed, and appropriate investments and loans must be provided to farmers to increase their productivity.
In this respect, government agencies like Mardi (Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute), Felda (Federal Land Development Authority) and Felcra must be well-capitalised and allowed to provide more direct support without unnecessary federal government interventionism.
We can also provide direct subsidies or cash transfers to farmers, to enable them to purchase feed, fertilisers, pesticides and other raw materials (thank you to Twitter user @rajan_2009 for these suggestions; according to his bio, Rajan is a “full-time farmer and freelance engineer”).
Another Twitter user @CgtHajar suggested kitchen gardens, permaculture, food forests and community-supported agriculture (according to her bio, CgtHajar has multi-disciplinary experience, including in agricultural engineering).
To do all this, we must also reduce licensing barriers to encourage more urban farms and alternative farming, while providing some training and tax incentives.
Reduce risk
Over a three-to-five-year period, Malaysia can and should aim to reduce food imports.
Community gardens can be one of the ways to help ease food shortages. — Photos: Filepic
Whatever food we still import after this period should be from diverse sources and not just reliant on single-source countries that expose us to disproportionate risk.
In addition, we must implement the One Health approach.
In essence, One Health treats public health as a combination of three health systems: for humans, for animals and for the environment.
Therefore, the use of pesticides and fertilisers must be kept to a minimum, and there must not be overuse of antibiotics for cattle and poultry.
Polluting water sources is bad for humans, but also for animals and food crops.
Therefore, the One Health approach needs coordination between the Health Ministry, Veterinary Services Department (where this columnist’s father served for 30 years) and Environment Department.
And one important way to reduce risk is to build a strategic stockpile of non-perishable items like rice and wheat.
This was done during World War II by the United States and the United Kingdom, and is currently pursued by countries as diverse as Algeria, China, Egypt, Morocco and the Philippines.
Singapore has a Rice Stockpile Scheme administered by their International Trade and Industry Ministry , and there is an Asean Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve (Asean plus China, Japan and South Korea).
Reduce wastage
It is estimated that 20-30% of all food is wasted if calculated from the farm to the table.
Vegetables can spoil if lorries don’t arrive fast enough, meat can spoil if the fridge is not cold enough, and buffets can be very wasteful too.
Therefore, there should be a strong public education campaign to reduce wastage at home and at restaurants, and perhaps a temporary ban on buffet meals until the situation improves.
The quality of our logistics must also be improved.
The process of bringing food from farm to market to kitchens must be smoothened out, and all administrative and physical barriers must be removed.
This is called “reducing post-harvest loss” (thank you to CgtHajar for this term).
But in so doing, we must tackle a scourge of the food supply chain: middlemen, cartels and profiteering.
Price ceilings and price controls can be helpful, but only if accompanied by aggressive efforts to remove unnecessary middlemen, destroy cartels and eliminate profiteering.
Provide emergency support
Price controls can be a helpful short-term measure, but only if it is accompanied by aggressive efforts to remove unnecessary middlemen, destroy cartels and eliminate profiteering.
There should be concerted political will to provide emergency support to those who need it.
Means-testing (where applicants need to prove their eligibility for such support) should be kept to a minimum to preserve human dignity, reduce paperwork and increase speed of helping those in need.
There are many ways to provide emergency support.
Let’s start with farmers: there can be cash transfers to farmers and food producers so that they can purchase fertilisers (prices have doubled since the beginning of 2022), livestock feed and other required materials (thank you to Rajan for this suggestion/request).
For the B40 group, there should be a constant flow of food assistance kits of enough items to provide adequate nutrition.
At this moment, food assistance kits are preferable to cash transfers to the B40 group because there is a shortage of food.
With cash transfers, B40 recipients will still compete in the expensive marketplace for scarce items, and we can’t provide them with enough money.
However, once the situation improves, we should change to more cash transfers and less food assistance kits to provide choice, dignity and agency to the recipients.
This is also because cash is more easily tracked (especially into ewallets) and because procuring food items has a higher opportunity for corruption than providing cash.
There should be constant government support for food kitchens and community kitchens like Kechara Soup Kitchen and Pertiwi Soup Kitchen, because there is simply no way for the government to know the entire universe of people needing help.
And finally, there should be active surveillance and monitoring of malnutrition in children and the B40 group, with medical and nutrition interventions provided as necessary.
Worsening situation
In last month’s column, we discussed food policies in three domains: food security, food safety and food labelling.
This month (July 2022), the food situation has worsened.
It is not enough to create yet another task force whose main tool is “price ceilings for important items”.
We need a multi-prong approach to solve a multi-factorial problem, and not blame foreigners or ask citizens to eat less.
Dr Khor Swee Kheng is a physician specialising in health policies and global health. He tweets as @DrKhorSK. The views expressed here are entirely his own. For more information, email starhealth@thestar.com.my. The information provided is for educational and communication purposes only. The Star does not give any warranty on accuracy, completeness, functionality, usefulness or other assurances as to the content appearing in this column. The Star disclaims all responsibility for any losses, damage to property or personal injury suffered directly or indirectly from reliance on such information.
