Food Security Malaysia
At Urban Hijau, our core focus is wholesome healthy food!
Food is something that is very close to us and we have been doing what we can especially to help communities who need the healthy food the most. Below are a few topics to understand the situation and how we are dealing with it.
- Food Security Malaysia
- Nutrition Value
- Carbon footprint
- Distribution
Food & Food Security
After air and water, food is the most important thing that we as humans need to survive. And getting wholesome food is becoming more and more difficult.
The statistics are shocking! Below are some that has been derived from The Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA).
Only 12 crops!
We can have thousands of different crops and various species under each crop to include in our diets as food.
Food Security on the other hand is defined as:
“people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life.” United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security.
So how do we get to a future that is food secure?
A new technology or some magic formula? No!
Ultimately it is still a people thing! Doing the right thing, at the right place, in the right way.
Food Security in Malaysia and beyond can be solved with ways that our ancestors have taught us. Going back to
- Growing what grows locally
- Growing diverse variety of food
- Having unadulterated fresh food
Adding technology to assist in improving efficiency where appropriate while learning from the patterns in nature following the permaculture design method can assist us in creating abundance.
Global Food Security
According to the United Nation, nearly 9 percent of the global population faces hunger, and an estimated 840 million will face food insecurity by the year 2030.
Food security has come into sharp focus as a national and global issue in the past several years.
As explained earlier, food security is more than just ensuring there is enough food to eat. It is also about the quality of the food and the reliability of global supply lines. Lack of food security can lead to conflict, civil strife, poverty and starvation. With the rise in climate change and global population and even supply chain disruptions such as those experienced in the pandemic, ensuring food security is of critical importance.
As per the Committee on World Food Security, there are four pillars to food security. These are availability, access, utilization and stability
- Availability relates to the production and distribution of food, especially through agricultural resources
- Access concerns the affordability and distribution of food based on consumer household preferences
- Utilization relates to how each household prepares and processes food as well as the quality and safety of food for consumption and finally
- Stability looks at how secure the system is over time in delivering food consistently to the target population.
Food Security in Malaysia
Malaysia remains vulnerable to food insecurity in the future due to being reliant on imports for maintaining its food supply, especially for rice. Households are estimated to spend nearly 70% of their budgets on food, which means that a systematic approach is required to ensure population food needs are met. Disruption in the supply chain of imports from neighbouring countries such as Thailand and Indonesia can potentially result in high food price spikes in the future. Around a quarter of Malaysia’s food supply comes from imports. A common item such as chili which is found in most Malaysian cuisines is imported almost two-thirds from Thailand.
A lingering issue in regards to Malaysia’s approach towards food security is the underdevelopment of its agricultural capacity. The focus has remained disproportionately on its industrial yield crops while other food production has lagged significantly. A major reason is that smallhold farms and urban farming remain untapped in their potential to contribute towards boosting the capacity of Malaysia to weather any system shock.
During a food crisis, the brunt is felt by the most vulnerable members of society, including low-income (B40) residents, the orang asli and refugees. There is an urgent need to ensure that these sectors of the population have the needed support.
Building Resiliency and Self-Sufficiency
Again solving the whole crisis in all its integrated parts is simpler said than done.
As shown in the figure below, the implications are too many.
- We need to reduce wasted food. This needs to take place both at supply side, logistics as well as the consumer side.
- Agricultural Employment needs to be addressed carefully by bringing urban youth
- We need to use the already existing spaces within places we live in – from roof tops to side walks. Make edible landscapes rather than just beautiful
- We need to increase biodiversity and change the types of foods we consume and go back to our local heritage
Many if not most of these problems can be solved in integrated sustainably designed farms.
As the saying in Permaculture circles goes:
Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple – Bill Mollison
The simplest action that we can do is to start small in our own localities.
Establishing farms and producing food where people live in an integrated manner is the best way to solve most of the problems – one small farm at a time.