Food security improves as pandemic takes toll

The Food Security Agency (BKP) has reported that the number of cities and regencies that attained food security in 2020 exceeded the number of those that lost the status in the same year, thanks in part to government support.

Last year, 15 cities and regencies posted a food security index reading that lifted them out of food insecurity. North Nias in North Sumatra, for example, recorded a rise in its food security index to 68.1 in 2020, up from 56.4 a year earlier. This regency’s latest score puts it 8.52 points above the threshold signifying regencylevel food security.

At the same time, nine regencies fell into food insecurity, among them West and South Halmahera in North Maluku.

“We note that our food security has kept improving,” Andriko Noto Susanto, head of the center for food availability and insecurity at the BKP, said in an online event on July 14. “If we consider food security as resilience, our resilience keeps improving as well, so food-insecure cities and regencies have been declining and the [number of] secure ones has been rising.”

In 2020, the number of food-secure cities and regencies increased to 444 from 438, while the number of food-insecure ones fell to 70 from 76.

Food security in Indonesia nevertheless took a hit from the coronavirus pandemic, as reflected in a 2.31 annual contraction in household expenditure on food and beverages outside restaurants in the January-to-March period reported by Statistics Indonesia.

While more and more cities and regencies are categorized as food secure, some one-third of them posted declines in their food security index reading, although the declines did not necessarily push them into food insecurity. East Jakarta, for example, recorded a 5.32-point fall in its index value to 81.99.

For cities, factors affecting food security include the prevalence of stunting in children under 5, life expectancy and the share of households without clean water, according to Andriko. For regencies, it typically relates to the ratio of consumption and production, the poverty rate and the number of medical workers as a share of the population.

“It is no longer a secret that the ratio of medical workers [to the population] for eastern regions, outer islands and remote areas is very inadequate, so people’s awareness about good food, nutrition and health tends to be lower,” said Andriko.

To keep the poorest 40 percent of households afloat, the government raised last week the budget for social protection in the COVID-19 stimulus package by 22 percent to Rp 188 trillion (US$12.94 billion).

The government support comes in various forms, from a monthly Rp 200,000 stipend per family through the staple food program to 10 kilograms of rice through the State Logistics Agency (Bulog).

Felippa Amanta, the head of research at the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies (CIPS), said such programs were necessary during the pandemic, since food prices were high while many had lost their jobs or had been forced to close their businesses.

“This has quite a significant impact on nutrition both now and in the future,” said Felippa. “So social protection programs have helped, but their positive impact could be made more certain if they were accompanied by [market] intervention to [ensure] the availability, affordability and diversity of food for the community.”

Last year, the prevalence of undernourishment rose to 8.34 percent from 7.63 percent a year earlier, Andriko said, citing BPS data. That rise was equivalent to 2.15 million people and thus had put an end to the decline seen since 2011.

For comparison, Indonesia scored 59.5 last year in the global food security index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), down from 62.6 a year earlier. The fall was driven by a decline in the natural resources and resilience score, which measures how well a country adapts to climate change risks.

This has quite a significant impact on nutrition both now and in the future.