While the rest of the world focussed on ‘Sustainable food systems for food security and nutrition’ on Oct 16 , World Food Day  2013, Malaysians were besieged  by politics and religion. The Roman philosopher Seneca said long ago, “A hungry people listens not to reason nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.” As such, food security is national security.

Food security is the most important issue in the 21st century. Issues like access to land, climate change, changing food culture and consumption patterns  have impacted on food supplies and availability of food. However, the single most important factor that determines access to adequate food is rising prices of food.   

Food insecurity

The poor and the new poor in this country - the middle class whose purchasing power is shrinking are facing challenges in providing adequate and nutritious food for their families. Increasingly,  a food insecurity situation is emerging in this country.   

Food insecurity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, results from a lack of access to food. There are two kinds of food insecurity: transitory and chronic. Transitory food insecurity is a consequence of instability in food prices, food production and household income. Chronic food insecurity is a continuous state of inadequate diet because of the inability to buy enough as well as healthy food.

Indigenous communities as well as others who live in remote areas  not only face economic barriers such as high costs of food and poor purchasing power, but also challenges such as  poor roads and  lack of transportation in accessing sufficient food.

Indigenous communities traditionally produced adequate food for themselves. However, frontier development activities such as logging, large-scale mono-crop plantations and the building of dams have pushed them from a state of food security to a situation of  food insecurity due to loss of land, biodiversity and water pollution.

Food culture

Food  culture and consumption patterns as well impact food security both locally and globally. In his enthralling book , ‘Fast Food Nation’,  Eric Schlosser reveals through facts and observations how “fast food has changed the landscape, fuelled an epidemic of obesity and  propelled American fast food  culture to the rest of the world”, and to our detriment created our lust for fast meaty food.

Land and water resources have been taken away to produce  food based on livestock products for the fast food industry. The anti-alcohol lobby would also argue that drinking beer, another kind of consumption, has affected grain supplies which could be used to reduce hunger. Colonisation and economic globalisation as well have contributed to changing food culture patterns.

Many traditional vegetables and local food items have disappeared together with our wet markets. Today supermarket shelves display more carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cheese, sausages...

Corporate agriculture has taken over the production of  food from our small farmers and indigenous communities who provided a wide variety of  local food and sustained our food security  and cultural identity. These communities preserved genetic diversity in the plant and animal world for future generations.  

Historian Felippe Fernandez-Armesto in his book ‘Civilizations’ gives us an example from our neighbour Thailand on ensuring food security for generations to come. In the 1960s in Thailand, “rogue archaeologists who were looking for early evidence of agriculture found caches of seeds apparently set aside for planting 12,000 years ago”.

Budget 2014 and right to food

News reports recently quoted CIMB chief Nazir Razak warning Malaysians not to hope for more handouts in Budget 2014. He was reported to have said “ the government was facing the daunting task of getting Budget 2014 right, based on the current gearing level, amid uncertain global conditions.He said that now was the time for financial institutions as well as the people to give priority to the government’s agenda in managing the budget deficit.”

The handouts before the last general elections, a form of money politics, provided a welcome relief, albeit temporary, to the poor in the country to their food insecurity. The poor are not responsible for the country’s budget deficit. Nazir Razak is right we should not hope for more handouts.

The government should recognise the right to food as a fundamental human right. This right flows from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.

It is also time to review many of our trade liberalisation policies and agreements that threaten our national food security.

The Budget should put forward measures that reflect sustainable agriculture and food policies, social justice and  food security particularly for those who cannot purchase adequate food due to spiralling costs of essential foods. Food insecurity affects particularly the health and well-being of children who are Malaysia’s future.

In this context there is very little data available on communities whose food security has been affected  by inadequate access to food. For example, there is no data available on the percentage of indigenous communities who are food insecure. Such data is easily available for indigenous communities in Australia, for example.

Sarawak our food security state?

Indigenous people with their vast intimate knowledge of ecosystems, agriculture and sustainable food production systems are well-positioned to take the lead to our path to ensuring national food security. Indigenous people must be brought to the centre of policy making in food and agriculture matters.

The resource-rich state of Sarawak, one of the world’s richest biodiversity sites, and its large and dynamic indigenous community, is ideally positioned as Malaysia’s food security state. It could fill our food basket.

Budget 2014 offers opportunities to provide resources to Sarawak to shift its gears from  frontier development activities such as  plantations, logging, mining and dams to sustainable food production that will protect its rich biodiversity, ecology, lands of indigenous communities and their knowledge on our plant and animal gene pool, seeds and conservation of its forests .

Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud recently offered Malaysians some lessons on tolerance and showcased Sarawak as a very tolerant Malaysian state. He could very well offer Sarawak as Malaysia’s food security state and Budget 2014 provides the opportunity to provide the resources to Sarawak to ensure Malaysia’s food security and national security as well.

JOSIE FERNANDEZ has worked on food security programmes and projects in Malaysia and the Asia Pacific region. She is an Asian Public Intellectual Fellow under the Nippon Foundation Programme for Asian Public Intellectuals.