Re-Thinking “Food Security” in the Malaysian Context
by Dr Michael D Jeyakumar

I would like to start off by inviting everyone to reflect on the term “Food Security”. What should this mean to the planning departments in government agencies? How should national planners evaluate the status of our “security” with respect to food supply in our country? Is it by listing the self-sufficiency levels (SSLs) of the common food items consumed by our population? And then somehow summating them to give an aggregate over-all SSL? Should we give weightage to any of the food items? Are all food items equally important when assessing food security?

I would argue that we should evaluate and plan for our food security by asking this crucial question: would we be able to feed our population if there is severe disruption in world food supply chains¹? In considering this question, we have to bear in mind the dearth of solidarity displayed in 2021, when the rich countries acquired all the available Covid vaccines, leaving the poorest nations with hardly any vaccines². If that was their response with regard to what was considered to be a crucial life-saving vaccine, do we expect anything different if a shortage of wheat were to develop in the international commodity markets? It is likely that the rich countries will rush to stockpile wheat, exacerbating the shortage and driving the price of wheat to impossible levels.

Malaysia is actually very insecure with regards to its caloric requirements, the most important component of food security of any population³. Malaysia’s caloric requirements are met primarily by rice (62%) and wheat (38%).⁴ Currently we import all the wheat we consume and about half of the rice we consume. In other words, we only produce about 31% of the caloric requirements of the Malaysian population. We obviously are in a very vulnerable situation! We need to onshore much more of the production of grains and other caloric-rich food products.

For full paper see link below....

https://harismibrahim.wordpress.com/2025/03/01/re-thinking-food-security-in-the-malaysian-context/