"ASEAN's strategic food security objective should be resilience, not maximal self-sufficiency." This is the urgent call in a new policy review published by the Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development (AJAD), as one of the world's major food-producing and food-exporting regions continues to face food insecurity within its borders, worsened by various shocks in recent years.
The article, "ASEAN Food Security in an Era of Polycrisis: From Production-Centered Policy to Regional Resilience," is authored by Dr. Paul Teng of the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. It examines how climatic shocks, geopolitical conflict, energy and fertilizer price volatility, biological threats, trade restrictions, and economic pressures can occur together and amplify one another.
The paper describes a regional paradox: Southeast Asia is a major food-producing and food-exporting region, yet food insecurity and undernutrition persist within it. These vulnerabilities are being intensified by crises that affect not only production but also trade, logistics, prices, household incomes, and nutrition.
"The polycrisis era exposes the limitations of judging food security primarily through production," Dr. Teng writes.
The paper argues that domestic production and self-sufficiency remain important, particularly for staple foods, but they are not sufficient measures of food security. Countries must also be able to keep food affordable and accessible, maintain functioning supply chains, secure agricultural inputs, and protect nutrition when several disruptions occur at the same time.
ASEAN member states bring different strengths and vulnerabilities to the regional food system. Some are major agricultural exporters, while others rely heavily on food imports. Some possess greater financial resources, technology, logistics, and research capacity. According to the paper, resilience depends on connecting these complementary strengths rather than expecting every country to produce everything it needs.
Citing estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and its partner agencies, the paper notes that about 14 percent of Southeast Asians experience moderate or severe food insecurity, while 5.1 percent of the region's population is undernourished.
Dr. Teng proposes a resilience-centered strategy that includes keeping intra-ASEAN food trade open, diversifying external sources, strengthening agricultural input security, expanding climate-resilient production, protecting food affordability and nutrition, and improving regional data, preparedness, finance, and technology cooperation.
The region does not need to build an entirely new policy architecture, the paper says. Existing mechanisms—including the ASEAN Food, Agriculture and Forestry Sectoral Plan 2026–30, ASEAN Integrated Food Security Framework, ASEAN Food Security Information System, ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve, and ASEAN Climate Resilience Network—already provide a foundation for collective action. The challenge is to improve implementation and make these mechanisms work together when several shocks occur.
"ASEAN should concentrate on what it can do better regionally than individual states: keep regional markets functioning, share timely information, coordinate emergency responses, reduce asymmetries in capacity, scale proven solutions, and mobilize external resources," Dr. Teng writes.
AJAD is an international refereed journal covering agriculture and development in Asia published by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA). The policy review is available at https://doi.org/10.37801/ajad2026.23.2.p1