President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. pushed for regional “self-sufficiency” at the 17th East Asia Summit (EAS) held in Cambodia last Sunday to ensure that there will be enough food for people in the Indo-Pacific region amid the global crisis.
In his intervention during the event, Marcos stressed the importance of international cooperation to prevent regional food shortage.
“It has become glaringly clear that there is a dire need to strengthen food security towards self-sufficiency in our region, to increase adaptability and resilience in the face of threats to the global supply chain,” Marcos said.
He noted that food security is also linked to climate change as extreme weather events have caused massive damage to agriculture.
“It is incumbent upon us, for our sake and that of future generations, to act decisively and immediately on climate change,” Marcos said.
Among the international leaders present in the EAS were Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, United States President Joe Biden, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Kate Ardern, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, India Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, South Korea President Yoon Sukyeol and Australia Prime Minister Anthony Norman Albanese.
APTERR reform
Marcos, who is also the concurrent agriculture secretary, has also raised the matter at the 40th and 41st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summits and related summits, which were concluded last Sunday, since it is one of his administration’s priority agenda.
This after the pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine have caused global food prices to rise, which did not bode well for the country, as it relies heavily on imports to meet local demand for rice, flour, and other food items.
During the Asean Plus Three Summit (China, Japan and South Korea), Marcos proposed to diversify the Asean Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve (APTERR) to cover other commodities and staples.
The APTERR is a pool of rice stockpile and funds, which APT members could access during times of adversity. It currently contains 787,000 metric tons of rice stocks.
“APTERR is extremely beneficial to our countries. We are vulnerable to many hazards and natural calamities due to topography and geographic location,” Marcos said at the APT event.
Aside from the APTERR, the President also pushed for “innovative solutions” and “enhanced connectivity to national, regional and global value supply chains” to ensure regional food security.