6 - Impact of COVID-19 on Singapore’s Rice Supplies, and Future Food Security Challenges

Summary

Singapore imports more than 90 per cent of its daily food consumption. Imports are one of the four key “taps” on the supply side for meeting demand. The other three include domestic production, reserves and growing food overseas and re-importing it into the country. Within the island citystate, rice plays a crucial role, since it is a staple in the Singaporean diet. According to the country's 2010 National Nutrition Survey, rice and rice alternatives (e.g., wheat) composed the largest share of consumption requirements (44 per cent), followed by meat and meat alternatives (30 per cent), fruits (12 per cent), vegetables (12 per cent) and wholegrains (2 per cent) (HPB 2010). Despite rice's importance, Singapore relies purely on international sources to meet rice consumption requirements. This is because rice is a land-extensive commodity, requiring vast expanses of land that the city-state lacks.

The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, and it has been a significant disruptor to global health, with more than 450 million cases recorded as of March 2022. It has also disrupted the global economy, causing economic contractions that have not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This chapter presents policy insights for Singapore's food security in the face of COVID-19, learning from its experience in its rice sector. It is divided into three sections. The first section describes the policy context for food security in Singapore prior to COVID-19, describing the evolution of Singapore's approaches, including the investments in domestic production after the Global Food Price Crisis of 2007–8; the development of its Food Security Roadmap in 2013; the restructuring of its food authority, the Agri-Veterinary Authority and its transformation into the Singapore Food Authority announced in 2018; and the launching in 2019 of the “30-by-30” target of 30 per cent food self-sufficiency by 2030. This section highlights that across these transitions, Singapore has forgone attempts to boost domestic production and stayed the course of import reliance for rice, by focusing on diversifying foreign sources for rice, as well as other commodities.