‘Food chokepoint’ disruptions and implications for Asia
IN RECENT years, global food security has suffered from overlapping crises caused by conflicts, geopolitical tensions, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in severe food supply disruptions.
These disruptions have been accentuated by several “food chokepoints” such as in the Red Sea where Yemen-based Houthi fighters have attacked merchant ships and caused uncertainty in food shipments via the Suez Canal. The shipping traffic through the Panama Canal has decreased due to drought, which also hit river transportation systems such as the Mississippi River and Rhine River.
As the global food system is already increasingly dependent on the movement of food from a few major “breadbasket”-exporting regions to food-deficit areas around the world – often through these “food chokepoints” – the reliance on specific shipping routes intensifies the pressure on global food security. It also impacts agricultural product competitiveness, delivery schedules, as well as food availability and prices.
KEYWORDS IN THIS ARTICLE
BT is now on Telegram!
For daily updates on weekdays and specially selected content for the weekend. Subscribe to t.me/BizTimes
Opinion & Features
Shameless comebacks show we are in the age of chutzpah
It is time to put idle cash back into the market
Consider housing policy tweaks to boost Singapore’s birth rate
Gauging sentiment is crucial, and there are hard and easy ways to do it
Interests of OCBC and Great Eastern’s minority shareholders are fundamentally misaligned
The election-devaluation cycle