In many countries, agriculture is considered as source of emission with a significant contribution in climate change. This is probably the reason why we should start thinking about where our food comes from (not just where it comes from but also where it won’t come from), how little there may be, and what specific food groups may be affected, and what can be done about it. In broad terms, if I am in the business of agriculture as a producer (and a consumer too), what do we need to be aware of in terms of climate change?
Climate change is anticipated as major issue that will definitely affect agriculture, and because agriculture is the main source of food production at the moment, basically we can expect food production to be affected by climate change. So food production and climate change are seems to propagates each other backward[1].
This is where food security comes in. But our concern is not so much about food security but rather is more about the insecurity for the lack of food on our dinner table. According to the FAO[2], we think about food security in four dimensions:
First off, is making sure that the food is available. Second is to make sure that it is accessible physically. Third is to make sure that it’s affordable and lastly is to make sure of its safety because those four dimension are often interlinked. In terms of availability, especially among ASEAN countries, I can say that Singapore is a very good model. Data shows that currently Singapore only produce less than 10 percent of their food and the rest comes from overseas[3]. This might sounds like Singapore will always going to be vulnerable and susceptible to how climate change affects those countries where they get their food from, but not really. As a matter of fact, the availability of food in Singapore is not just through imports, they also grow their own food, they store enough stockpiles, and they also investing overseas where direct supply chains come back to their country whenever there is an excess supply.
Singapore companies yet is the best example of government to government business arrangement. For example, take Jilin province in China[4], an area that is multiple times bigger than Singapore, is prepared for growing several various food groups (e.g. wheat, maize, sorghum, and rice) by some Singaporean companies, where the surplus can come back directly to Singapore government.
In terms of self-production, Singapore is aspire to produce a third of their nutritional needs by 2030[5]. Their goal was intended for providing an alternative protein that can be obtained not just from agriculture but also aquaculture.
Basically, this 30 by 30 iteration is to address the food safety standards in a sense of being very proactive. So to make food available throughout the year, Singapore government have to be very conscious to climate change. They know that the quality of food will inevitably be affected especially when climate change affects their supply lines in overseas. When it comes to supply lines in overseas, Singapore depend on about 12 major countries. Most of their food such as fresh vegetables and eggs are comes from Malaysia[6]. When climate change happens, vegetables are good example to describe the negative effects (e.g. too much rain droughts) that will definitely lessened the supply. When there are storms, a lot of fish that they harvested from Malaysia is reduced.
Two regions such as North America and South America are major sources of imports for Singapore. Several years ago, they import a lot of animal feed from the western hemisphere where there was a big drought in North America[7]. This event affect the supply of soybeans. So because of soybean shortage, prices went up so the net result is that animal feed (e.g. fish and chicken) are all affected so there’s a competition in prices that caused the price of chicken and fish go up. So we’re really living in a very interlinked world and country like Singapore were certainly very susceptible.
One of the most intriguing part about food security is that if you look at prestigious international studies and surveys[8], country like Singapore usually rank quite high and it is sort of contradictory because as a small country, which obviously imports so much of food from overseas, they’re actually doing really well in terms of food security –where in reality they don’t have the kind of land and the flexibility that other countries may possessed.
But little did we know, all these international indexes are based on a certain set of rubrics and metrics that mainly consist of affordability, availability, safety and so on. Many of these indexes are like beauty contests, especially for country like Singapore where they do very well superficially but if we look within the surface, they’re so vulnerable.
Another significant aspect to look at other than food security is household security. But as significant as it may be, the household security is not as bright as the national security were. You can have your food secure nationally but at the end of the day, it is the household level that matters. Why there’s the hungry people that really illustrates this particular point because the household security is something that we still need to spend a lot of effort on[9] [10].
There is a lot of things to be done, and we still have many food insecure households who still have to fight for their food which made all of these studies about Singapore would be sounds more like a food paradise. While Singapore put this 30 by 30 ambition into motion, COVID-19 has brought up to people’s awareness as well and just by sheer natural effect of climate change supply will be more and more inconsistent–at the very least will be inconsistent if not curtailed. There are a lot of constraints for their government to fulfill this 30 by 30 dream.
As a developed country, they can tackle that sort of limitation via increasing their productivity. After all Singapore is pretty innovative society. In fact, Singapore is very technology oriented and that is why they shouldn’t think too much of their limitations like ‘land’, but instead they should think of ‘space’ and it’s already starting to happen[11]. Vertical farms is one of many innovative ideas to expand the planting dimension from one dimension to two dimensions going upwards to increase their productivity up a notch. Although, there are only certain food items that can grow in Singapore right now.
Thus, having this innovative technology at their disposal, the question is no longer about is it possible for Singapore to even grow certain food like rice or wheat anymore but is more about at what cost?
While cost is a very important factor, but at the end of the day Singaporeans need to start thinking about paying a bit more for their food. It’s inevitable that food prices will go up not just because of climate change as they surrounded by so many other countries. If they continue importing and there’s no supply chain interruption, they can expect to import food that is cheaper than what it cost them to produce locally.
If Singapore continue the supply lines from outside, even if they’re successful in 30 by 30 but the other 70 will still be imported so the next question is how do Singapore become price competitive with the imports?
- Productivity, Productivity, Productivity
First of all, they need to keep focusing on technology to increase productivity. They need to be prepare to go back to public outreach with a public mindset. They have to be ready to pay a bit more for food that they produce locally. When push comes to shove, the battle against shortages will be inevitable. Thus, if they’re not support their local farmers then in time for crisis they will be very vulnerable and exposed overseas.
- Quality Assurance
Secondly, like it or not, it all comes down to cost. The ideal public mindset will be the mentality that people are willing to pay a little bit more for the assurance of the quality they get (e.g. meat, vegetables, etc.). They need to make sure that the quality of their local products are higher than the rest of ASEAN. But is there enough awareness among Singaporean that their product is different and will they be willing to pay a little bit more for that?
- Educating the future generation
Singapore government may have already campaigned a lot more public outreach in a form of public education programs such as eating habit, food waste, and so on[12]. But advertising is about repeating the message consistently and repeatedly. It is very encouraging that we’re seeing some of these messages being given at the school level among ASEAN countries and as an educator myself, I personally believe that the younger generation is the perfect audience to start making a difference, not just for food awareness but also on food waste.
- Price barrier
Studies have shown that there’s a sort of a price barrier that the consumers are willing to bear in the substitute for quality which around 10-12 percent and anything beyond that will make the consumers suffer. But again the main concern is always about the mass market where you need to feed the majority of people and this is where the price sensitivity is all time high. Although at the same time, there will always be parts of our population who are looking for niche products or willing to pay much more for organic food, super food and so on.
If we think about consumer eating habits, such as beef that has its own climate impacts as well, it could also complicates food supply and a lot of consumers don’t really appreciate the fact that eating more animal protein has such big negative impacts on the environment. Instead of value, most people don’t think beyond just the price unfortunately. Little did they know that in order to produce one kilo of beef requires 16.000 kilos of water[13]. Thus, if you start eating something else that has a lower water footprint, you’re really doing a tremendous job in terms of helping the environment. Our fresh water resources are declining rapidly all over the world especially in the ASEAN region and the same goes without feeding protein the other animals.
The conversion ratios in animal protein sometimes are very inefficient, so why not eat more vegetable type protein instead of getting it from animal, which are essentially just converting your vegetable protein into animal protein? Be that as it may, food is viewed as such a personal thing for most people and it is strongly influenced by our legacy mindsets.
In addition to shifting our public mindset, there are some things to be considered both from a perspective of food security as well as climate change related, apropos dealing with the environmental water footprint problem such as:
- Food waste. First of all is by reducing food waste because that is a major concern. Take Singapore for instance. Even for a small country they do waste a lot of food.
- Second is asking ourselves: Do we need to eat as much as we’re eating? Because this will linked to food waste. As a human, pretty often we tend to overeat and that also creates another kind of problem such as obesity, diabetic, and so on.
- Thirdly is asking ourselves: Do we need to eat as much animal protein as we do today? Can we all be more ‘flexitarian’ and consciously try to at least reducing our footprint by 10 percent or more? Imagine if more people feel this way. Wouldn’t every individual effort adds up and makes a difference?
Conclusion
If we take ASEAN countries as the miniature scale of the world, the modern supply chains are all about responding to what the consumer want. For example, in every local supermarkets they try to anticipate what consumers want. So they responded to demand and then they get the supplier and then they go backwards. They work backwards through the supply chain and then the farmers respond by growing what the supermarkets want. From this we can see that consumers can have a very big role in affecting the supply chain. Take Singapore for instance, for a country that has relatively high household income and who can actually afford to eat expensive stuff, the demand for sustainably produced food has increased. All these are really good harbingers of the future.
As a country, we need to ensure that household are resilient to food insecurity. Countries like India, will be a good example. They have got laws that show that every household, however you are, will gets a minimum support of food[14]. It doesn’t have to be like that but this kind of thing is so fundamental and certainly we need to see how we can develop more households for this kind of security.
Besides, it is an existential thing that we all have to eat.
AL
References
[1] https://cornellpress.cornell.edu/climate-change-and-its-effect-on-our-food
[2] www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ERP/uni/F4D.pdf
[3] https://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-farming/singapore-food-supply/the-food-we-eat
[4] https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/another-setback-for-jilin-food-zone
[5] https://www.ourfoodfuture.gov.sg/30by30
[6] https://www.asiaone.com/health/where-does-singapore-source-its-food
[7] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/event/37106
[8] https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/Country/Details#Singapore
[10] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cnainsider/food-insecurity-singapore-hunger-poverty-777806
[11] https://www.permaculturenews.org/2014/07/25/vertical-farming-singapores-solution-feed-local-urban-population/
[12] https://www.towardszerowaste.gov.sg/foodwaste/
[13] https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Hoekstra_and_Chapagain_2006.pdf
[14] https://dfpd.gov.in/LwB3AHIAaQB0AGUAcgBlAGEAZABkAGEAdABhAC8AUABvAHIAdABhAGwALwBNAGEAZwBhAHoAaQBuAGUALwBEAG8AYwB1AG0AZQBuAHQALwA=1_93_1_Original.pdf
[15] food funnel burritos https://youtube.com/shorts/NQb7k2Q3mOU?