Food security is fundamental to human security and sustainable development. The global food crisis in 2007–2008 highlighted the point that food insecurity threatens peace and stability, and is a key cause of conflict and possible violence. In Southeast Asia, food security is an overriding concern as it is affected by short and long term factors, key among which are increasing food demand due to population growth, changing patterns of food consumption arising from rapid urbanization, decline of agricultural land and agricultural performance, constraints in natural resource utilization, negative impacts of global warming and climate change on agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods, unstable prices of food products and oil-based chemical inputs and fuel, and the rapid transformation of agricultural and food supply chains (Teng and Escaler 2012).
