Alternative approaches to food security in Asia: what are the effects and at what cost?

Panel in the 7th Annual International ADI Conference on Food, Feeding and Eating In and Out of Asia

Convenors: Wusheng Yu and Jakob Roland Munch, University of Copenhagen

Following recent world food price spikes, food security has been re-emphasized by governments in many countries, including those in Asia. In many cases, national food security has been interpreted as self-sufficiency in food grains, a goal that has been pursued by national governments through domestic subsidies and trade policy instruments. Such pursuit of food self-sufficiency obviously differs from the
food security approach based on the reliance on the world market.

This panel invites contributions that offer critical reviews of food security policies pursued by Asian countries either individually (for example India and China) or in a regional or global context, particularly following the 2007-8 world food price crisis. Topics of interests include but are not limited to: measurements of food security (or insecurity); fiscal, efficiency and welfare effects of national food security policy; distributional consequences of food security policy; tensions between food security
policy and regional/multilateral trade agreements; political economy of food policy; relationship between national food policy and global food security; and the impacts of food security policy on poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. Papers based on economic analysis or political economy discussions are particularly welcome, so are contributions based on multidisciplinary research that contains some economic analysis.

Convenors

• Wusheng Yu, Associate professor, Dept. of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen
• Jakob Roland Munch, Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Copenhagen