The Philippines has sought the support of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the establishment of an East Asia rice reserve as among the ways to effectively ensure food security in a region that produces 80 percent of the grain amid the worsening impact of climate change on global farm production.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said during a UN forum in Rome that the establishment of a rice reserve has now become imperative as food security will remain nothing but an “illusory goal” in the face of climate change that has altered crop planting patterns and imperiled food production worldwide.

Speaking before the World Summit on Food Security held in Rome last November 17, Yap said FAO can send experts to help East Asia in its effort to set up a this emergency rice reserve, which will help serve as a permanent mechanism to ensure food security and the stability of rural incomes and rice prices in the region.

FAO received a recommendation last year from Yap to set up a similar global food stockpile that will halt a crash in the prices of rice and other staples amid supply gluts or become a seller to stem spiraling prices in cases of production or supply shortfalls.

“It is time for the FAO to send experts to join ASEAN in this effort,” said Yap during the World Summit on Food Security of the three-day UN summit. “Asia produces 80 percent of global rice which is in turn consumed by more than a billion of the world’s poor. Lessons learned here will prove invaluable, should the need arise to create a parallel food reserve for other staples.”

Despite early successes in galvanizing the global community to meet and issue declarations of urgent concern on global food security, with commitments of financial support, Yap lamented that “such funding support has not only been insufficient, but the mechanism for the access of badly needed funds, non-existent.”

“Funds and projects are merely repackaged and actual new money for agriculture infrastructure, extension, seeds, and financing, are insignificant when compared with the amount needed to make a difference,” he said

In an earlier regional forum, Yap said the East Asia Emergency Rice Reserve (EAERR), which is funded by Japan, is a much-needed vehicle for volume and price stability for food in the region.

Yap called on his counterparts at the recent ministerial meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the urgent convening of a Senior Officials Meeting to handle the technical details of establishing the EAERR.

Japan had designed the EAERR as an interim emergency measure, but Yap said the mechanism can also provide “a fundamental platform for stability and rural incomes on which agricultural food production can grow from.”

He noted that “in times of crashing food prices, the EAERR can be a depository of food to halt a crash in prices” while “in times of spiraling prices, the EAERR can be the seller at reasonable capped prices, to country importers to ensure that food prices remain reasonable especially for the benefit of the world’s poor and vulnerable.”