The APEC Food Security Forum sponsored by Taiwan successfully closed on August 20 and Vice Minister Yu-tsai Huang of the Council of Agriculture (COA) said in the closing ceremony that representatives of 20 APEC economies have reached a consensus that Asia-Pacific countries should combine the power of public and private sectors to implement concrete actions plans for the promotion of sustainable agricultural development and increase agricultural investment and trade in response to regional food security problems. The measures include strengthening research and development as well as promotion of agricultural technology, enhancing productivity, increasing investment in agriculture and related infrastructure constructions, promoting exchanges of such market information as agricultural trade facilitation and food supply and demand, and strengthening resources management and disaster prevention measures in response to climate changes. Especially when the Asia-Pacific region faces food security problems, APEC must take emergency response measures immediately. Only by taking all these measures APEC economies can confront future challenges posed by continuous climate changes to food security. Taiwan will present conclusions of the Forum for further discussions in the forthcoming APEC Ministerial Conference on Food Security, scheduled to be held in Japan in October.

Forum participants first discussed emerging issues and challenges related to current Asia-Pacific regional food security. Having faced food price hikes and other challenges in the past and considering potential problems in the future, the participants agreed that it is important for APEC economies to strengthen cooperative partnership between public and private sectors and establish a healthy chain of food supply to ensure regional food security.

Then each APEC economy reported its food supply and demand situation and shared with others its strategies in response to food security challenges. All APEC economies believed that they should continue implementing joint action plans to achieve the common goal of safeguarding regional food security.

And the participants agreed that food trade should be liberalized further and returned to market mechanism. They also believed that APEC economies should upgrade their agricultural investment and infrastructure constructions after discussing United Nations Guidelines on Responsible Agricultural Investment. When confronting challenges related to climate changes, APEC should pay close attention to land and water resources management and biodiversity and increase food productivity through agricultural technology R&D and promotion, and ensure food security by taking disaster prevention measures in response to frequent natural disasters in the APEC region. APEC members also agreed to consider the establishment of “APEC Emergency Food Reserve System” as proposed by Taiwan in response to emergencies and present the initiative to the forthcoming APEC Ministerial Conference on Food Security.

Since food security is a regional problem, the Asia-Pacific region should join efforts in maintaining regional food security through various APEC forums. Therefore, APEC should play a key role in the long-term food security policy. Especially in the forthcoming Ministerial Conference on Food Security to be held in Japan, APEC economies will discuss such topics as sustainable agricultural development and upgrading capability to deal with disasters, promoting agricultural investment, accelerating agricultural trade, strengthening market mechanism for agricultural products and improving operational environment for agribusiness and affirm various food security action plans, hoping to achieve the two major goals: sustainable agricultural development and facilitating agricultural investment, trade and market.

In order to assist APEC in promoting the maintenance of regional food security and related tasks, Taiwan has presented the following 6 action plans in response to climate changes and food crisis: Promoting the utilization of native vegetables in response to climate changes; “Developing and applying irrigation techniques in response to climate changes;” “Developing food production techniques to slow down and confront climate changes;” “Applying post-harvest treatments to ensure food security;” “Utilizing information decision-making system to alleviate the impact of climate changes on slope disasters;” and “Feasibility study on cost-effective APEC food security risk management mechanism.”