In Progress

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted a food reserve scheme to ensure food security in the face of unexpected instabilities in supply and production brought by a gamut of factors, through the ASEAN Emergency Rice Reserve in 1979. While the model was never actually put into practice through its 27 years of existence, it has inspired the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), another regional group, to adopt a similar scheme in 1987. More recently, the biggest trading partners of the ASEAN in East Asia, namely Japan, China, and South Korea, comprising the so-called “ASEAN Plus-Three,” have pumped life into the dormant scheme by expanding the ASEAN Emergency Rice Reserve into the East Asia Emergency Rice Reserve (EAERR) guided by the same objectives with some structural and operational changes.