Food prices 'endanger millions in Southeast Asia'

The number of hungry and food insecure people in the South East Asian (SEA) countries could rise to 112 million, an increase of 28 percent, due to food price spike, warns anti poverty agency, Actionaid.

BANGKOK: 21 February 2009- a week ahead of the 14th ASEAN summit, Actionaid today launched its new report, "Food Foremost- A Call for Action at the ASEAN Summit."

The report says though the financial crisis brought down prices of food items in recent months from an all time high, it did not improve overall food security situation as rising unemployment and falling income are exacerbating hunger. The farmers are under-planting due to tight credit situation and falling prices of agriculture production.

"These factors indicate that price volatility will continue with another steep rise in rice prices. This is partly because of production and demand uncertainty as people are switching to cheaper staples," said Mr Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, Actionaid's head of policy in Asia region.

Some of these countries undertook short-term measures, which have not healed the wound and the sub-region remains highly vulnerable to future food crises.

Governments must focus on how to protect the hundreds of millions of small holding farmers, the millions of urban poor and the rural women. They must enable farmers to adapt to suitable approaches such as regenerative agriculture and appropriate technologies in agriculture. There must not be another devastating green revolution, but a complete transformation in asset ownership and access to credit markets, instead, recommends Actionaid.

The report says now it is time that the leaders of the South East Asian countries take measures both regionally and nationally for a sustained impact. Actionaid demands that the ASEAN governments need to take the following actions:

· Re-orienting ASEAN Food Reserves from trade to humanitarian perspective
· Promoting sustainable agriculture and organic farming
· Moratorium on biofuels
· Tackling the problems of land ownership and land grabbing
· Promoting urban agriculture and more productive use of land
· Promoting equitable income distribution to the poor as part of the regional economic integration

"The ASEAN governments should face the challenges of growing populations to meet their demand, and ensure food availability. They must limit biofuel production and make land and water-bodies available to the landless – especially to women who own less than 5 percent of total land in South East Asia, said Jan Boontinand, Actionaid's South East Asia Policy Coordinator.

ENDS…………….

Notes on estimation of the forecast of rising number of hungry and food insecure people in ASEAN countries:

See Actionaid's new report: "Food Foremost- A Call for Action at the ASEAN summit" available on www.actionaid.org

The estimate is based on the number of poor people living below US $ one per day in South East Asia, the proportion of total population and the proportion of poor people in the region compared to the world population. This estimation follows a methodology developed by the University of Minnesota. According to that modelling exercise, after adjusting other factors, an increase of one percent in food price leads to 16 million additional hungry people in the world. Accordingly in South East Asia such a rise of 1 percent would result in 1.55 million additional poor. For this estimation, we considered a 20 percent rise in food price and arrived at a figure of about 31 million.

The inflation rate has had a sharp rise in the mid 2008 and then had a decline in the late 2008 and early 2009. Every estimate shows the food price index went much higher than 20 percent while yearly food price (point to point inflation) rarely went down below 20 percent throughout the region.

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