Asia's Developing Future

Energy price shocks—negative and positive—can have a powerful economic knock-on effect, especially on food prices where food is scarce. Even though great strides have been made since 1945 in feeding Asia’s huge populations, more than 500 million people still face food insecurity. Of the world’s undernourished, almost 65% live in Asia. Food insecurity stems from the link between energy prices and food prices, among other causes. A survey of Bangladesh, the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Viet Nam from 2010 to 2016 proposed a model with eight variables affecting agricultural food prices—land prices, GDP, inflation rates, oil prices, biofuel prices, employment in agriculture, labor costs, and real interest rates. Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary, one of the authors of ADBI’s research on this topic, sums up the survey’s findings. Read the transcript https://bit.ly/2LPmZuB Read the working paper https://www.adb.org/publications/volatility-linkages-between-energy-and-food