The Asia Pacific region will house the largest population in the world by 2050, estimated to reach some 5.2 billion or around 60% of the global population.
However, this region also faces some of the toughest challenges in the world when it comes to ensuring a food supply that is not only sufficient to feed this immense population, but also resilient and sustainable enough to do so.
Some of this can be attributed to a lack of education and awareness among both food producers and consumers, but there are also many deeper underlying root issues that need to be addressed before sustainability can truly become a way of life in this region.
Here are three of the core issues and challenges sustainability faces in Asia:
1) Finances, and the lack of knowledge to access this
Asia is home to a large proportion of the world’s agrifood production, but yet many of the farmers growing and producing these commodities remain within the poorest strata of the economy compared to anywhere in the world.
To many in this group, sustainability is no more than a buzzword because survival is their utmost priority, and money is crucial to achieve this, but very often they end up receiving the least profits in the agrifood industry despite putting in the most effort.
This is especially prominent when it comes to smallholder farmers who likely have even less access to financial management education or knowledge – and these smallholders in fact make up the bulk of the farming community in Asia.
Smallholder farmers work with small plots of land, usually below two hectares, but altogether make up some 350 million individuals and produce an estimated 50% to 80% of the food consumed in this region.
“The simple fact is that smallholder farmers do not have the means to access funds – many do not know about schemes or funding that they might be eligible for, and even if they did the majority do not know English so global level funds are out of their reach,” sustainability risk management expert Navarun Atraya said.
“So there may be many financial schemes out there that people will say are available to them, but the success of these hinges on being able to get this financing through to the right stakeholders.”
Finances are becoming ever more important to food producers in the wake of rising costs, attributed to economic conditions that have become less than stable due to geopolitical challenges and other factors.
“The biggest challenge to establishing sustainability as a big pillar of Asian food systems is in fact the dropout rate of smallholder farmers, but given the challenges they face to make ends meet it is not them who are to blame,” former Unilever CEO Ira Noviarti stated.
“Realistic on-the-ground situations see smallholder farmers facing continuous decreasing profit margins due to rising input costs e.g. fertiliser becomes more expensive but crop prices stay the same – without access to additional financing to help them, they are not able to break out of the cycle of being trapped in poverty, hence have to drop out.”
As such the ‘need of the hour’ is to level the playing field for these farmers.
“Smallholder farmers are disadvantaged in many ways but they need to be placed front and centre in any project – it is foolish to just throw things at them and tell them what to do,” Rockefeller Foundation head of Asia Deepali Khanna added.
“Instead of throwing sustainability demands around, it would be more prudent to invest in proper training for them so they can proactively make the right choices, and also give them the information, technology and resources directly.”
She also stressed that funds are currently far below what is necessary all over the world that are targeted at building resilience in food systems.
“There can be no doubt that funding is the biggest gap – estimates put funding needs for this space at between US$250bn to US$480bn, but the sad reality is that we are currently only at US$44bn, and most of this is not getting to the poor farmers.”
2) Too many projects, too little follow through
While many, many food firms and governments have identified sustainability as key targets or strategies, the total overall impact thus far has been limited, particularly in Asia.
“During my time in Unilever, I saw many people dwelling too much on pilot projects, with many of these being funded by big companies – but the challenge always peaked when it came to scaling these up, and this has been a major problem that was repeated across many projects in many iterations,” Noviarti said.
“So then what happens is that the problems get too much and the project is not scaled up, and the company then moves on to the next project, and without funds the original project is unable to make any lasting impact – this is a problem area that really needs to be reviewed thoroughly.”
Many of these projects involve eventually generating value from a tangible real-world perspective, usually monetary and generally requiring appealing to consumers for this.
“The thing is that many of these projects are not securing value creation throughout the supply chain, and the companies tend to look to the end-game in terms of consumers when it comes to long-term implementation,” she added.
“But what sustainability is about is involving value creation from the product, packaging, proposition and eventually making all of these better and more beneficial from an all-rounded perspective – it is not about involving consumers as part of the solution.”
That said, in the long run it is of course important to motivate mindset changes in consumers in order to make large-scale impacts, but this needs to be developed over time.
“Building resilient food systems is about large system changes and behavioural changes – large organisations are the ones that can mobilise capital to make these systemic changes, but need to be in it for the long haul and think about how to get smallholders along for the ride as well in order for sustainability to be achieved.”
3) Government role and capacity
The roles of various parties to drive sustainability in Asia has been a hotly-debated topic in the region, with both governments and big food companies largely felt to hold the largest responsibilities.
International Rice Research Institute Director General Yvonne Pinto believes that governments play the most necessary role in this area.
“Large organisations may have the foresight and the finances, but the fact is that the situation is not linear, especially in Asia, and there are many steps they need to take to shoulder this responsibility alone – not least building trust with the farmers, which is one of the hardest parts,” she said.
Khanna concurred but highlighted the challenges in terms of uniformity among various agencies, making the situation even more challenging.
“Saying the government has an important role to play is not wrong, but this needs to be unpacked properly: There are many ministries and agencies in every government, and it is the farmers who suffer if they are not synced up – and we haven’t even gotten to the common clashes that happen between national-level and state-level administration yet,” she said.
“Right now, it is evident that in many Asian markets there is a lack of capacity on both the farmer and the government levels – but the good thing is that governments really do want to understand the situation and form the best policies, though there really needs to be more strategic thinking and co-operation between all parties to ensure the best interests of farmers and the rest of the population are met in a sustainable way.”
