Managing Food Insecurity Risk
Analytical Framework and Application to Indonesia
Many of the recent concerns about food security relate to perceived threats to current
levels of food security, such as those due to price shocks or natural disasters. These
threats concern the risk of food insecurity. This publication develops a risk-management
tool to examine the robustness of policy responses to managing risks and uncertainty
across a variety of different threats to food security, and applies the framework
to an Indonesia case study.
Five risk scenarios were selected as major threats to food security in Indonesia,
following a consultation process among stakeholders and policy makers, and assessed
in terms of existing and alternative agricultural and social policies. The risk assessment
shows that domestic economic and natural disaster scenarios are more important than
global price hikes and that a policy strategy that concentrates on addressing a single
source of risk, such as a price spike in international markets, may increase vulnerability
to other sources of risk such as domestic crop failure. The analysis yields a number
of specific policy recommendations, including targeting of social assistance programme
using food vouchers or cash transfers.
Published on June 01, 2015