A rooftop farm in Singapore on May 27, 2020. The tiny island nation lacks natural resources and imports more than 90% of its food from more than 170 countries and regions.
Lauryn Ishak | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
Singapore is known for its diversity of street food and local cuisine, but many people may not know that it faces a nagging challenge – food security.
The increasingly pressing issue has become the focus of the nation’s attention following recent food export bans – in particular the chicken export ban by neighboring Malaysia, hence Singapore. imported 34% chicken.
As a small island nation, Singapore lacks natural resources – It imports more than 90% of its food from more than 170 countries and regions.
With the country vulnerable to many external turbulences, the government launched a “30 to 30” initiative to produce 30% of its nutritional needs by 2030.
But the country is already feeling the effects of rising food inflation.
Food prices rose 4.1 per cent in April from a year earlier, up from 3.3 per cent in March, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Ministry of Trade and Industry said.
Global situation
In particular, the hawker stall owners are starting to find it difficult because they are under pressure to keep prices low for the masses.
Remus Seow, owner of Fukudon, a hawker stall selling Japanese rice bowls, is an example.
Over the past six months, the prices of the products he buys, such as cooking oil, eggs and meat, have increased by 30% to 45%, he said.
Seow recently raised prices for the first time since he opened his stall two years ago. If prices continue to rise, 20% to 35% of customers will probably not buy his stall again, he said.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore said that rising global food prices are expected to continue to contribute to local food inflation beyond 2022.
Global food prices have begun to rise during the pandemic, but the Ukraine war has worsen inflationary pressures.
Dil Rahut, a senior research fellow at the Asian Development Bank Institute, said the food shortages will continue in the short term and could even persist for the next year or two.
Other countries cannot quickly jump in to fill the void left by Ukraine and Russia because it takes at least a year to grow fresh produce, Mr. Rahut said.
Similarly, Paul Teng, assistant professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, warns that even if the war ends, food prices will not immediately return to pre-war levels.
That’s because factors like rising fuel costs, labor shortages and disrupted supply chains will increase existing food shortages, driving prices up, Mr. Teng said.
The World Bank reported that Food prices are expected to increase by about 20%. this year before easing in 2023.
Trippingly
While Singapore is still doing relatively well in maintaining food security, its future remains unclear, Mr. Teng said.
“Singapore has downplayed its agricultural sector and its food imports,” he said. “We’ve done a head turn now and started accelerating, but this takes time to pay off,” he added.
The “30 to 30” plan is intended to give Singapore a level of self-sufficiency sufficient to get it through tough times, but that won’t be enough to completely replace imports, Mr. Teng said.
That’s because the government has decided to invest more in increasing the country’s gross domestic product and average household income than it does in agricultural activities, he added.
“As long as you have the money, and as long as there is no disruption to the supply chain, you can always buy food somewhere because the volume we need is (relatively) not very high,” says Teng.
However, although Singapore is able to achieve its goals technically and technologically, there are still two problems – price and consumer attitudes towards “new food”, he added.
Teng said consumers are particularly fond of buying “natural foods” and may not accept “new foods” — like lab-grown chicken and alternative protein sources — as an important part of their goal. “30 to 30 years old” target.
However, Mr Rahut warned that achieving the target would be “difficult” as the deadline approached, and Singapore still produced only 10 per cent of its own nutritional needs.
People will also still buy imported food products if they are cheaper than local products unless the government can subsidize these products, he added.
Likewise, Seow said he would not buy local products unless the price can match the import price.
“But the only way (forward) is for the government to go ahead and do its best to maintain the price, quality and demand of what we need,” he said. “And then people will slowly accept (local produce).”
Rahut also suggests that marketing local products such as High quality and nutritious Food can encourage consumers to buy at a higher price, just as some are willing to pay more for products marketed as organic.
What can Singapore do?
In the short term, both Teng and Rahut say, the government can provide a safety net for disadvantaged people, for example through cash or voucher payments.
However, Mr. Teng added that one of Singapore’s weaknesses is that although it tries to diversify its imports from a group of countries, it still relies heavily on one or two countries.
For example, Singapore imported 48% of their chicken is from Brazil and 34% from Malaysia in 2021, the Singapore Food Authority said.
Teng also noted that most of the chicken imported from Malaysia is raw chicken, while the rest imported from Brazil and other countries are frozen chicken.
Therefore, at the policy level, it is important to diversify imports for different types of products, said Mr. Teng, such as finding more sources of raw chicken to import.
The government could also encourage more Singaporean companies to develop food overseas and form agreements with other governments to ensure products are not banned from export, he added.
“The big picture is to make sure the producing countries, the exporting countries, have a (food) surplus, and there are a lot of ways we can help other countries do that,” Teng said.
Similarly, Rahut added that since Singapore is such a technologically advanced country, it could consider helping other countries improve their food production systems.
That will not only help Singapore stabilize food prices and food security, but also food security and global food prices, Mr. Rahut said.
