Asean food security stable as Typhoon Yagi lashes the region, at least for now

PHNOM PENH - Agriculture experts are expressing cautious optimism on food security in Southeast Asia amid the harsh weather realities posed by recent Typhoon Yagi in Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The damage inflicted on farmland is not merely a temporary setback; it could have a prolonged effect on agricultural productivity and the region’s food security if unchecked, warn industry experts.

Prominent international trade publication, The Rice Trader’s vice president Samarenud Mohanty told Bernama that Typhoon Yagi inundated around 400,000 hectares of rice area in Northern Vietnam and Myanmar.

About 190,000 hectares in Vietnam and 200,000 hectares in Myanmar were damaged by the heavy rainfall since early September.

"There will be some short-term impact on rice prices in the affected regions of both countries. But this shouldn’t have any significant impact on rice production in the region this year.

"This typhoon shouldn’t impact Southeast Asia’s food security but it will increase household food insecurity of poor farming households whose crops have been damaged.

"There will be enough rice production to meet demand in the coming months and I expect prices to go down because of excess supply,” said Mohanty.

Vietnam is one of the largest rice exporters in Southeast Asia, supplying about eight million metric tonnes to the global market, along with Thailand that exports nearly the same amount.

Daily news service provider Vietnam Brief said the nation’s agriculture sector has suffered the most from the recent natural disaster. Roughly 262,000 hectares of rice, crops, and fruit trees were damaged or destroyed and 2,250 aquaculture farms swept away during the storm.

Nearly 2.3 million livestock and poultry died.

While Myanmar and Vietnam farmers are reeling from the devastation inflicted by Typhoon Yagi, growers in neighbouring Cambodia are in a melancholy mood watching what direction the storm will move next.

The Cambodian Farmers’ Federation Association of Agricultural Producers (CFAP) said the farming community is monitoring the erratic weather with much anxiety, unsure when the sky will turn into dark clouds.

"We are not as badly affected as Vietnam or Myanmar; luckily we are surrounded by mountains in the northern region that can protect us from the monsoon.

"Our farmers are used to storms and bad weather conditions because of many past experiences.They are able to adjust their cultivation despite short notice. But we still express concern because of the weather and we will only know in October what will happen, the after effects.

"At the moment there is no serious impact on food security since we have sufficient rice and vegetables supply," Lead Founder and Chief Executive of the association Sok Sotha told this news agency.

Despite the rapid rural-urban migration, at least 80 per cent of the Kingdom’s 16.8 million population rely on farmland - a lifeline for millions of small-scale farmers who survive on rain-fed agriculture.

The need of the hour is public policies that can weather climate change to protect food production by promoting sustainable farming to feed the growing population in the region with a 670 million population.

Senior Fellow at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute Dr Jayant Menon said policymakers need to adopt practical measures to safeguard the sector as it will always remain vulnerable to climatic change.

"Extreme weather events like typhoon Yagi are likely to become more common going forward because of climate change. This will likely affect food security in the Mekong region.

"However, governments should resist the temptation to employ export controls to offset supply shocks at home. The only solution is to keep markets and borders open and increase trade within and from outside the region.

"If there are stockpiles, governments should release them as a stopgap measure in order to boost supplies in the short run,” he told Bernama. - BERNAMA