Food is an existential need that has often been taken for granted, especially when there are no crises that threaten its supply. But as the Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, and human history has seen many food crises, from the plagues in Egypt to the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s, to the Great China famine of 1959–1961 which destroyed over 15 million lives, and to the recent food price shocks of 2007–2008. It was within living memory too that much of the world was threatened by famine and hunger in the 1950s and 1960s, and even today, there are still many countries where for reasons of conflict, strife, natural disaster or inclement climate, food is still not of an assured quantity to meet daily needs. Indeed, even in ASEAN countries, one of the most dynamic economic regions of the world, the United Nations estimates that about one in 10 people still do not have enough to eat. The Asian Development Bank has termed the broader phenomenon the “two faces of Asia”, where wealth and full stomachs co-exist with poverty and hunger. That food matters is well recognised by governments and their citizens alike, and food security is a concern foremost in the minds of many. This became especially so after the food supply shocks and price hikes of 2007–2008, which jolted many from complacency to again put food security on the agenda of governments. There is also an increasing realisation that food security is a complex phenomenon with many facets that are inter-linked in a global food system that sees food as a commodity, and trade essential to assure sufficiency between food surplus or exporting countries and food deficit or importing countries.

In the foreword for my new book, Food Matters: Food Security and the Future of Food (authored with Manda Foo, 2018), Dr Fan Shenggen, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute, wrote: “Society in general needs to understand how food is produced through agriculture and the efforts of many actors — from farmers to scientists — to ensure that we keep ahead of the spectre of famine. While population growth is well known as driving the need for more food, less well known are the many other trends and challenges associated with food security. This book fills that need to inform about these complex trends and challenges. Like peeling an onion, knowledge can only be gained by shaving off the many layers of complexity to reach the core of the issue.”

Current Situation and Threatening Trends

The world of food today is made up of countries that produce through agriculture enough food for themselves and some for export, and those countries that either do not produce enough or do not even have the capacity to produce any significant amounts, like the small city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong. The ability to produce more food in a country from arable land which is declining in area due to the demands from urbanisation means that ways of farming with new technologies has become akin to a race to stay ahead of the hunger curve. The Green Revolution of the 1960s has generally been credited with staving off famine in many countries through new varieties of seeds and inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and proper knowledge for managing water and soil. However, these early yield gains do not have an eternal life and for many crops, productivity growth has been declining.

The natural resource base on which agriculture depends, has also been declining. A relatively new threat in many developing countries of the world is the ageing and declining farmer population, with insufficient new entrants into farming. Of course, the “mother” of all threats is “climate change”, which over the long term has potential to derail all the gains made by farmers and scientists to keep ahead of the food insecurity curve. Even in the short term, unexpected severe weather events have proven to be a curse on farming and led to supply disruptions of fresh vegetables, fruits and fish. Threats from climate change and severe weather will require innovative approaches to deal with them, among which is climate-smart agriculture that uses adaptive farming methods and crop varieties or animal breeds.

Put together, there are many threats to food security that form the supply side of the food equation. There is also the demand side, emanating from the increased demand for food due to growing numbers of people, but also from their changing dietary habits resulting from urbanisation and growing wealth. A threat is increased food waste as urban societies become divorced from farming and do not value food as an existen- tial item but rather treat it as a commodity, to be cast away when not needed as often happens when excess is served. Food waste has become a matter of concern and needs to be addressed as a threat to food security requiring action. Changing diets from urban- isation and increased wealth also lead to two out of the three “burdens” of malnutrition — obesity linked to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, and micro-nutrient defi- ciency. The third burden is under-nutrition leading to damaged child development and nutrition deficit diseases.

But the urbanisation trend on its own could lead to government policies set to favour consumers in cities at the risk of disadvantaging farmers who produce food. Low prices for consumers originate from low prices paid to farmers and further disincentivise new entrants to farming, as well as making it difficult for present-day small farmers to have a decent livelihood.

Important New Adaptive Trends
The world became an urban society in 20081, and many developing countries will further urbanise and reduce their agriculture in the coming years. As noted earlier, with fewer farmers in agricul- ture, labour productivity becomes an important issue that currently seems to be only solvable through deployment of technology, which saves labour and concurrently increases crop yields with less input. Two important sets of technologies could potentially prove to offer solutions — digital technologies and biotechnology — both operated in a new form of farming called “Knowledge Intensive Agriculture” (KIA). Farmers not only need new physical tools but also the knowledge to efficiently use these tools, hence KIA that is reflective of the Fourth Industrial Revolution based on digitalisation, but tapping into the earlier “bio” revolution based on advances in molecular biology. Biotechnology crops (or colloquially, “GMOs”) now form the bulk of soybeans used to feed livestock and fish to satisfy the demand for protein, and despite broad acceptance by scientists of their safety, still see controversy stirred by special interest groups. Biotechnology crops account for much of the trade between food-exporting and food-importing countries. The use of drones for crop management, and the use of portable devices to help make planting and selling decisions are signs of digital technology in KIA. So too is the use of climate-adapting crop varieties such as drought-tolerant corn and flood-tolerant rice. All these adaptive trends reflect human creativity and the innovative spirit that responds to needs created by crises.

An adaptation to the urbanisation trend is also urban-and peri-urban farming (UPA) that is technology-enabled with efficient space utilisation. This has taken the form of vertical farms in which plants are grown in multiple stacks that reach upwards and in plant factories that grow plants in a totally enclosed environment with measured air, light and humidity. Indeed, plant factories may even be considered as cities respond- ing adaptively to the greater societal need for fresh, safe food produced close to source, and is spawning new agricultural entrepreneurs who are tech-savvy and fin-savvy. Singapore as a small island-state is now finally emerging from its compla- cency to actively pursue this space and in the process, produce some quantities of food to buffer itself from unexpected food insecurity. As a vision, there may even be a potential to export a Singapore brand of factory food that is safe, fresh and healthy.

The Future of Food and “Glocalisation” Food today comes mainly from agricul- ture, either in the countryside or in cities. There is growing interest in producing food without agriculture in the form of synthetic meat or meat alternatives based on vegetable cells and other kinds of plant cells. The production is based on tech- nology, which grows cells in large sterile containers under controlled conditions. Beef hamburger patties were among the earliest synthetic meats and the technolo- gy has now improved so much as to lower the cost of production as well as to produce meat that is virtually not distinguishable from real animal meat. Advocates argue that this form of meat production is kinder and less polluting, and if the trends emulate those in the microchip industry, it can be expected that the price of synthetic meat will keep growing lower. A related trend in future food is increased interest in non-mainstream food such as insects, with several countries now having insect food factories and F&B outlets serving insect-based dishes.

However, in the foreseeable future, food grown traditionally using soil and plants or animals as we know them, will likely still remain mainstream.

Food security in the future will likely also see countries which have a certain level of self-sufficiency if they have the natural resources to produce food, and countries which rely more on international trade to source their food. No country today has a “closed door” policy on food imports. Even the most food-secure countries import to allow diversity in their diets, in response to citizen demands. Therefore, a “Glocal” approach is likely to dominate in the future, expressed as “Think Global, Act Local”, and reflective of the strong links between countries in a global food supply system.