In Asia, the term “Rice Bowl” is synonymous with food security as rice is the main staple for most of Asia’s population. For more than three years, Frontier Strategy Group has partnered with Syngenta and other leading food security experts across Asia to develop the Rice Bowl Index (RBI), a comprehensive initiative designed to facilitate positive, productive dialogue, collaboration and action between governments, the private sector and other key stakeholders in the area of food security.

This year’s results signal a continued improvement in Asia’s food security with the potential for even more in the coming years.

Rather than measuring a country’s current level of food security, or only discrete elements of food security, the RBI assesses how robust a country’s capacity is to address the challenges of food security. Specifically, the RBI looks holistically at the following four sets of factors:

Over the last 12 months, the food security robustness of the 15 countries covered by the RBI has continued to improve (2.0% growth), albeit less significantly than between 2013 and 2014 (3.6%) and slightly below the 10-year average growth in scores (2.9%). The composite index results and some key takeaways from the research are listed below:

2015 Composite Index Results

Key Takeaways

• Pakistan saw the largest improvement in its RBI score, while Thailand saw the largest decline
• Lower fuel and commodity prices are having a positive impact on food security
• An improved political environment caused Myanmar to have the largest change in the Policy and Trade rubric
• China continues to perform strongly on the farm.
• Vietnam’s performance improved considerably over the 12 month period
• Indonesia’s performance in the rubric of demand and price improved significantly
• The Philippines also improved its performance across the demand and price rubric
• India’s large availability of agricultural land helps underpin its performance

In this year’s report, the RBI also took steps to further refine its data sets. For the first time, it has identified and set out a threshold analysis, providing a standard for comparison when determining whether a country is robust in its food security. The new threshold system is designed to support policy makers in deciding where to focus their efforts in attaining greater levels of food security.

For more information about the Rice Bowl Index, visit this page. To learn how FSG can help your business develop powerful indices or predictive models tailored to your specific industry, please contact us.