Malaysia’s long-term food security

Introduction

At its core, Malaysia is a small open economy and large trading nation with a robust annual trade surplus and trade-to-GDP ratio. Further, Malaysia’s natural capital, strategic geographical location, and historical advantages should be leveraged for its long-term food security.

In the wake of emerging global, regional, and national level complexities and challenges, a rethinking of Malaysia’s long-term food security involves considering innovative policies and strategies built on past gains. This requires course corrections, fostering collaboration between government, industry and farming communities to create a balanced holistic approach to address and manage the multifaceted aspects of food and nutrition security.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlights how black-swan events could exacerbate these challenges. However, a key lesson from the pandemic was that countries that recovered speedily invariably adopted a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach, emphasising the importance of multistakeholder cooperation and policy implementation. These, along with strengthening value chains and trading networks, adopting digital agriculture technology and innovation, are key to Malaysia’s long-term food security.

Relatedly, a key impending challenge comprises our preparedness to manage multifaceted disruptions to value chains and trading networks arising from climate change, zoonotic pandemics, armed conflicts, trade wars and disruptive technologies, notwithstanding other black-swan events.

To navigate these challenges successfully and fortify our preparedness, we must return to basics and leverage on our natural capital and inherent strengths, recognising the different models and approaches to long-term food and nutrition security.