While global warming is seriously threatening food security throughout the world, the APEC Food Security Forum opened at the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei in the morning on August 18, with some 100 representatives from government, academia and industry of 20 APEC economies including Australia, Chile, China, Japan, Korea, Peru, Russia, News Zealand, the United States and Southeast Asian countries attending to discuss countermeasures. It is one of the largest activities in the APEC agricultural sector in recent years. Minister Wu-hsiung Chen of the Council of Agriculture said in the opening ceremony that since food security concerns the basic right of people’s survival, APEC economies must combine all the power and wisdom of public and private sectors to study action plans in response to regional food crisis so as to effectively ensure regional food security.

The Council made a successful bid to sponsor the APEC Food Security Forum during the APEC Agricultural Techniques and Cooperation Working Group meetings in June 2009. The Forum is aimed at inviting representatives of APEC economies to share their policy experiences in dealing with food security issues, strengthen capability building and ensure food security in APEC economies through regional cooperation. In two days the participants discussed such topics as “emerging issues related to APEC regional food security,” “challenges and strategies of safeguarding food security,” “food security under environmental changes” and “APEC’s role in long-term food security” and summarize the opinions of APEC economies to make concrete recommendations for the First APEC Ministerial Conference on Food Security, scheduled to be held in Japan in October, to consider.

COA Minister Chen pointed out that due to the adverse effects of global climate changes, high energy prices, biomass energy development and increased food demand by emerging economies, international food prices rose rapidly in 2007 and 2008 after having increased gradually since 2002, triggering food crisis in many areas. Although global grain supply has improved increasingly, grain prices are still at high levels and food crisis may occur suddenly. So how to ensure food security has become the most important global agricultural issue and a common responsibility and mission of APEC economies.

The government of Taiwan has paid special attention to the impact of climate changes on agriculture and formulated an adjustment strategy with “low risk, low carbon emission, new business opportunity” as the vision after convening the Policy Conference on Adjusting Agriculture in Response to Climate Changes on June 15. The key formulated strategies include emergency response strategy under extreme weathers, which is to actively grasp the situation of international food demand and supply and inventories, establish a food security mechanism through regional alliance, and then formulate food production and inventory policy according to different risk scenarios to ensure Taiwan ’s food security and sustainable agricultural development.

The First APEC Ministerial Conference on Food Security to be held in October is expected to explore sustainable agricultural development from increasing food production, developing rural communities, responding to environmental challenges and natural disasters and other angles, and discuss ways to further promote agricultural investment and trade. Taiwan representatives will also engage in dialogues with related international organizations seeking to strengthen and promote Asia-Pacific regional food security cooperation and exchanges. Minister Chen believed that the APEC Food Security Forum will be able to use properly overall regional food resources and proposed concrete and feasible action plans to achieve the goal of enhancing Asia-Pacific regional food security while taking into consideration the interests of all APEC economies.