Asia: South-eastern Asia

The BIMSTEC - Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation – country group consists of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand. Together, these countries are home to more than 712 food-insecure people, and the prevalence of food insecurity has increased in the majority of the region since 2014. Given this food security situation, India’s recent export ban of non-basmati white rice and export duty on parboiled rice raise significant concerns for the region.

The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2023 Midyear Update finds that while some countries have seen improvements in hunger and malnutrition in the first half of 2023, high levels of acute food insecurity remain worldwide. As in previous years, conflict, climate change, and economic shocks continue to be the main drivers of food crisis, with conflict playing the predominant role from January through August 2023.

Several constraints limit the ability of smallholder farmers in low and middle income countries (LMICs) to reach their production potential. One such constraint is access to formal finance; smallholders and other agricultural value chain participants frequently cannot access credit necessary to invest in new crops or technologies and deal with risks and shocks and/or savings products necessary to safely carry wealth from harvest to planting.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the vulnerability and the resilience of food supply chains. Supply chains from farm to retail have been disrupted, primarily by government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions affecting labor supply, input provisioning, logistics, wholesale, retailing, and food service. Supply chains have also shown a good deal of resilience and innovative capacity to adapt to the major supply and demand shocks they encountered.

The monsoon season in Southeast Asia extends from May through September. According to a special report from the FAO's Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS), this year's monsoon season has seen above-average rains, along with a series of typhoons and tropical storms from June through early August. These conditions have caused severe flooding in several of the Food Security Portal's prioritized countries , resulting in loss of life, displacement of large populations, damage to farms and infrastructure, and loss of livestock and stored food.