Food industry & economic development in the Asia Pacific

In this short paper I want to examine the impacts within the Asia Pacific region of the emerging food trade and associated systems that can be regarded as aspects of the spread of globalisation. The paper is divided into two parts. First I examine the growth of the food trade in the region. Here I present some statistics to demonstrate the very large size of this trade, and identify some of the forces that are now shaping the growth of this sector. These include the rapid growth of cities, a range of other demographic changes including the ageing of the population in a number of countries, the growth in the demand for processed foods, and the rapid growth in supermarkets and similar new retail outlets. Secondly, I present some evidence on the impacts of these changes. While the rapid growth of food output in many countries in the region is to be welcomed there are still some serious problems of malnutrition. Some two- thirds of all hungry people in the world are to be found in Asia, and India alone has more malnourished people than the whole of Africa. Here I use some of the tools and concepts of food security to examine why this should be so, and identify a number of key causal factors. On the basis of this evidence I argue finally that governments should not simply accept the growth of the food trade in its present form as some kind of irresistible force that must simply be accepted. Good policies can still be applied to generate food systems that are more effective and produce better nutritional outcomes. But, I argue, much multidisciplinary research on an "all of food system" basis will be needed to inform policy makers and result in better outcomes.download