With insights on resilient and sustainable food security, participants learnt of its importance, especially in the time of a pandemic, when they participated in the webinar titled “Towards a Resilient and Sustainable Food Security for Malaysia in Challenging Times”, jointly organised by Faculty of Accountancy and Management (FAM), Belt & Road Strategic Research Centre, and Center for Entrepreneurial Sustainability on 7 January 2021 via Zoom.

The webinar aimed to enlighten participants on Malaysia’s current food security and the possible solutions to achieve a resilient and sustainable food security. Speaking at the webinar were invited speakers, namely Agriculture and Food Security Cluster of Academy of Professors, Malaysia (APM) Head and National Agriculture Advisory Council Member Prof Datin Paduka Dr Fatimah Mohamed Arshad and ISIS Malaysia Senior Visiting Fellow, Myanmar Praxis Co Ltd Co-founder, and Myanmar Rice Federation Senior Advisor Dr Larry C Y Wong.

“According to the World Food Summit, food security exists when all people, at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs, and food preferences for an active and healthy life. From here we note, the major pillars of food security are availability; accessibility or affordability; and utilisation or nutrition security,” explained Prof Fatimah.

“However, when a shock occurs, we see the disruption of this shock towards our food security. In this case, the shock is referred to the Covid-19 pandemic, which we are currently facing. When the pandemic happened, we see the implementation of lockdowns and movement control order (MCO) initiatives issued by the government. These initiatives disrupted the supply chain and caused economic slowdown, which caused loss of income and poverty for many. Having lost their income and jobs, the affected people were subjected to health vulnerability, lower nutrition security and lower affordability to buy food. The disrupted supply chain, on the other hand, affected the availability of food. All of these, when viewed in a bigger picture, brought forth food insecurity,” explained Prof Fatimah. Other implications to food security, as mentioned by her, also included consumption growing faster than production and the need to source from import to meet local demands.

Speaking on a more positive note to assure participants, Prof Fatimah explained that economic growth can contribute to food security. “For instance when a growth-induced policy is implemented, we see economic growth. From there, we see an increase in food productions, farmers’ incomes, and consumers’ incomes. With the increased food production, availability, affordability and nutrition security is assured, which then leads to food security, eventually increasing quality of human capital,” said Prof Fatimah.

On ensuring food stability, she listed various methods, including, diversifying agriculture and employment; monitoring food security and vulnerability; developing risk analysis and management; and reviving access to credit system and savings mechanisms. Meanwhile, methods to ensure food sustainability, as listed by Prof Fatimah, were implementing eco-friendly farm practices; natural resource management; zero-food waste; community-based farming; and community-based resource management.

She added, “When we speak about resiliency, we look at these attributes – absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity and transformative capacity. These attributes are connected to resilience-building strategies which consist of tangible measures and intangible measures. Under the tangible measures, we look into the income or savings, assets or capitals, and production or efficiency. The intangible measures will include risk attitude or perception, self-esteem, and faith or fatalism. With these strategies in place, we look into the food and nutrition security indicators, such as child malnutrition, household hunger score, months of adequate food provision, household per capita fund consumption, food consumption scores, and dietary diversity.”

Speaking from a practitioner’s perspective, Dr Wong spoke on “Rethinking Malaysian Food Security in the context of Covid-19 and the Future of Food: A Practitioner’s Perspective”. He spoke about the new dimensions and dynamics of food with the focus on future timeline, shared relevant lessons from Covid-19 pandemic to better prepare Malaysia for the future, listed future of food considerations, and shared his thoughts on moving forwards towards a resilient and sustainable food security.

“By 2030, Malaysia’s population will increase pressure on food demand, water use, and energy consumption. We will witness major demographic shifts from the long-term trends of increasingly urban populations, including cross-border migration, driven by conflicts, natural disasters, and the search for better livelihoods which will disproportionally populate the already rapidly growing urban areas. Inequalities and disparities will hopefully be lessened,” said Dr Wong.

He elucidated further, “These challenges will be exacerbated by climate change, which is capable of derailing decades of progress in economic development and food security. In a changing resource-scarce world, we need new models for consumption and production, such as responsible and sustainable consumption and production, and economic transformation, especially rural transformation. Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, such as artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with the digitalisation of agriculture, will inevitably drive social change, enabling new ways to optimize efforts to effect inclusivity, resilience, and sustainable food security and transformation.”

Dr Wong also advised that system-based supply chain and trading networks approach must be applied to untangle the complexity of food security and food systems. For managing food system risks, he mentioned that there is a need to understand the interconnected challenge and their consequences in various levels, including global, regional, national (macro), state (meso), and local (micro) levels.

“When we apply a holistic supply chain perspective, it highlights the need to focus beyond agricultural production and look at the challenges, risks, and opportunities along the entire supply chain and across chains (integration of supply/value chains), including future demand and trends. From the pandemic, we note the underscoring of the overarching importance of whole-of-nation and whole-of-society response. There is a need for unified commitments of multi-stakeholders coupled with policy, legal, and institutional coherence. Consequently, we should promote Malaysia’s new narrative – We Feed the World! We are already recognised internationally as the net exporter of food and this has opened up strategic possibilities. Leveraging on this and our other inherent advantages and champion an International Food Security Coalition (IFSC) and move forward,” commented Dr Wong.

The webinar ended with an interactive Q&A session.