Sat, Aug 02, 2025 page8

• Food security is national security

  • By Marcin Jerzewski 葉皓勤
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  A popular Taiwanese adage claims that with every grain of rice comes a hundred drops of sweat (“一粒米、百粒汗”). In a crisis scenario in which tensions in the Taiwan Strait disrupt imports and global supply chains, that grain would carry an even heavier weight. Boosting food security must become a core element of the country’s whole-of-society resilience strategy and a pillar of national security.

  According to the most recent data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Taiwan’s 2023 rate of food self-sufficiency, measured by caloric output, fell to an 18-year low of 30.35 percent, driven by grain shortages, declining rice consumption and rising meat intake amid shifting dietary habits. This shows that to feed itself, Taiwan needs the world.

  One widely analyzed and increasingly plausible scenario in the event of cross-strait escalation is a maritime blockade, in which Beijing would seek to isolate the country economically without initiating full-scale kinetic conflict. Results of tabletop simulations unequivocally demonstrate that a blockade would severely disrupt global maritime trade. Given Taiwan’s dependence on food imports, particularly grains and animal feed, even a limited blockade could trigger supply shortages, price shocks and a cascading food security crisis.

  In this context, food security cannot be treated as a standalone issue. It is shaped not only by what Taiwan grows and consumes, but by how external shocks — economic, climatic and infrastructural — affect its ability to produce, import and distribute food. These vulnerabilities are deeply intertwined with the broader architecture of national resilience.

  Embedding food security into Taiwan’s comprehensive security outlook requires addressing three critical fronts: economic dependence on imports, exposure to climate risks and the energy systems underpinning agricultural production.

  From an economic security perspective, food resilience is inextricably tied to international trade. The country imports almost 70 percent of its food calories, including nearly 40 percent of its grains and oilseeds from the US alone. Even more troubling is that China, where most of Taiwan’s security threats originate, is its third-largest supplier of food, and a significant source of fertilizers and their compounds, including urea. Any disruption to those supply chains could have immediate ripple effects.

  While recent efforts to diversify urea imports through partners in the Middle East and Southeast Asia are promising, they remain early steps. Taiwan’s high dependence on foreign inputs for consumption and production leaves it dangerously exposed.

  Moreover, Taiwan’s agricultural sector is already feeling the weight of the climate crisis. Disrupted typhoon patterns, rising temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall are shortening growing seasons, degrading crop quality, and reducing yields of essential staples such as rice and corn. This threatens human consumption and livestock feed supplies.

  These pressures are not hypothetical — they are already visible in the form of disrupted harvests and declining self-sufficiency. In a crisis, such ecological fragility could collide with external shocks to create cascading shortages. Adapting agricultural practices, and investing in climate-resilient crops and infrastructure must become national security imperatives, not just environmental aspirations.

  The vulnerability is compounded by challenges to energy resilience. From diesel-powered tractors in lowland fields to oxygen-generating aerators in aquaculture, Taiwan’s food production system is highly energy-dependent. Even post-harvest processes — such as cooling, milling and transportation — rely on a stable fuel and electricity supply.

  While some government contingency plans exist, such as oil-reserve-backed diesel access and cold-chain logistics with backup generators, gaps remain. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has yet to articulate a clear, food-specific energy continuity plan. A prolonged energy disruption would cascade through the supply chain, underscoring the need to embed food-energy interdependence in national security planning.

  Taiwan’s vulnerabilities do not exist in a vacuum. To fully grasp the urgency of bolstering food security, it is instructive to examine how current conflicts and strategic competitors are shaping global food resilience landscapes.

  Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine serves as a sober reminder that kinetic conflicts can push people into acute food insecurity. By May 2022, one in three Ukrainians faced food insecurity. The war disrupted domestic supply chains, halted oilseed processing and closed key ports, choking internal distribution as much as exports. In the first months of the war, satellite imagery showed that Russia’s widespread attacks on Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, suggesting a deliberate strategy to undermine Kyiv’s food-producing capacity. With agricultural shipments limited and local production under strain, food prices surged, compounding hardship for communities already experiencing displacement and destruction.

  If Ukraine illustrates the devastation that comes when war disrupts food systems from the outside in, China offers a different kind of lesson — how a potential adversary prepares for such disruption from the inside out.

  Across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing is looking to beef up its food security regime. Although Chinese leadership has long insisted that the country enjoys “absolute security” in food supply, it appears to be approaching the issue with growing urgency, elevating it to a national priority and codifying it in a Food Security Law, which took effect on June 1 last year.

  The shift reflects deep strategic anxieties, not just economic planning. China’s dual-track strategy for food security can be cogently summarized as “grain storage in land and technology”: safeguarding farmland while also investing in agri-tech to ensure a stable domestic supply.

  Faced with climate risks, geopolitical pressure and war contingency planning, Beijing is building buffers.

  For Taiwan, the message is clear: When your adversary is preparing for disruption, complacency is not resilience — it is vulnerability.

  To translate urgency into action, Taiwan should pursue three strategic steps to improve its food security:

  First, Taiwan must prioritize the expansion and diversification of domestic production. Building on the Big Granary Project, the effort should be accelerated and tailored to address nutritional needs and vulnerabilities.

  Second, Taiwan should accelerate the creation of a dedicated inter-ministerial task force to synchronize food, energy and economic security planning. The inclusion of Minister of Agriculture Chen Junne-jih (陳駿季) in President William Lai’s (賴清德) Whole-of-Society Resilience Committee is encouraging, but deeper institutionalization is needed.

  Third, Taiwan should consider forging new international partnerships. The recent Taiwan-US memorandum of understanding on the issue is a promising model that positively fosters public-private cooperation. A similar initiative with Japan — which launched a Food Security Reinforcement Policy Framework less than three years ago — could strengthen regional preparedness.

  In the face of mounting geopolitical and environmental risks, Taiwan needs to elevate food security to a strategic priority.

  Taiwan’s democratic future might hinge not only on deterrence and diplomacy, but also on the security of every grain of rice.

  Marcin Jerzewski is head of the Taiwan office of the European Values Center for Security Policy and fellow at Visegrad Insight.
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