Why Concern Ourselves with Food
Security in Thailand?!
Thailand is a net food exporting country. It may seem strange to Thailand's technocrats and to many in mainstream economics then that we concern ourselves with food security in Thailand. Food security, however, is far more than merely 'exportable surpluses'. Firstly, with hunger still prevalent in Thai society, just how surplus is the food we export? Secondly, with many farmers losing their land put up as collateral for agricultural loans and many other farmers just breaking even, how equitable is all this export?
Food security is generally accepted to be defined as ready spatial, temporal and financial access to reserves of, or to resources necessary to produce safe, culturally preferred foodstuffs. The large Alternative Agriculture Network (AAN) of Thailand, comprising NGOs and Peoples Organizations concerned with sustainable production of safe foods for the health and sustainability of the rural Thai lifestyle, has defined food security in the Thai context as comprising:
Mixed with the recent economic crisis is a food production crisis in the region: El Nino has been blamed for severely low agricultural production in all of Southeast Asia over the last year. This has left Indonesia almost 6 tonnes short of rice - fully half the world's tradable surplus. The Philippines' food crisis has forced residents of the Southern Island of Mindanao to eat toxic tuber crops to fill empty stomachs. So food security, in light of this severe crisis that has befallen the region, holds particular relevance to not only the producers and consumers of the country's food and the way of life of the majority of its citizens but also to the technocrats and diplomats of the region.
With Thailand being a net food exporter and one of the world's largest rice exporters, combined with Thailand's leading role in ASEAN and a role in the defense dialogue group known as the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), Thailand finds itself in the very sticky diplomatic situation of being of the "The Have's" while many of its long-standing friendly neighbours are left being of the "Have-not's". To offer food aid or not to offer food aid? In times of crisis, this could become a very political question of defense both nationally and regionally.
Further exacerbating this whole situation is the World Bank/IMF's Structural Adjustment prescription (SAP). The tight liquidity situation, brought about by both an extremely poorly managed and subsequently collapsed private financial sector and the resulting SAP imposed on the public, has left Thailand and some of its neighbours open to steadily increasing food costs. Also, the 'cyclical slow-down' as some in the media have chosen to call it, is very serious in the eyes of others. Jean-Michel Severino, Director of the IMF's Asia and the Pacific Programme, goes so far as to use the words "deep recession" and "depression" when talking about the region's outlook (while yet others from the IMF insist nothing is very wrong!)
It suddenly becomes very clear now why Thailand need consider food security. Combining the above definition of food security, the regional economic and meteorological crises and finally Thailand's exposure to such multilateral 'agreements' as WTO's Uruguay Round - which includes measures of questionable benefit as Green Box Exemptions), Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and most objectionably the biotechnological aspects of the TRIPS stipulations, Thailand - and indeed the region - does not look poised for any security in food.
The pause in the break-neck pace of development combined with a better educated (but unemployed) population provides both circumstance and energy for change. Thailand teeters dramatically on a threshold of drastic change. What lacks is direction. Hasty decisions could leave Thailand falling into the abyss of social and political unrest. Food security, with its implications for greater decentralization of decision making regarding rural issues (issues that thereby affect the vast majority of the population) is a critical vector in the direction of stable and constructive change towards stronger democracy.
Primary Considerations
Any and all trade and policy decisions affect food security. Really, food security is not simply food availability - it is the ability of a nation/community/family to provide itself food, one way or another. Supporters of the WTO feel that the way to most efficiently provide food is thru international trade and an economic measure of efficiency yeilding an index of 'comparative advantage'. While this may make economic sense, it is not a very compassionate means. More to the quick, however, is that themathematiciansand their models that yield these measures are not sophisticated enough to factor in ecological gains of small-scale no-chemical community based agriculture.
The AAN has made it quite clear that they feel food security is first a community/family level issue - that the indicators should be from the community, not the nation, as national aggregate indicators often tend to overlook large segments of the population. Such a high-accuracy focus that the AAN takes often reveals the effects macro policy has on the community - i.e. the effects of globalization and free trade.
The approach of the AAN presents many hurdles. There are many
large groups and bodies of legislation which play at the national and international
level including WTO, APEC, AFTA, ASEM, MAI, various domestic development
and resource management policies, etc.. In performing the research
as hoped by those attending this gathering, all these pieces of legislation
and all these institutions need be considered. Fortunately, there
are many organizations around the world that are similarly concerned about
the activities and effects of these international policies and have meticulously
reviewed many of them for us.
JD Comtois
June, 1998