"We know about the Amazon basin. We know about the Congo basin. But Southeast Asia has the third largest intact rainforest (but being lost at the fastest rate) yet people don’t think about Southeast Asia in the same way. "

TABLE: Thanks for joining us Thin. Can you tell us a bit about growing up in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma)? 

Thin Lei Win: So, you know, in many ways I've always been obsessed with food ever since I was born and raised in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. I grew up in a household that equates food and eating with community, love and sharing.

Myanmar is, and especially when I was born, was an agrarian country. So farming was a very important part of society. We are a nation obsessed with rice. For example, we would greet each other by asking, “Hta-min-saar-pee-bee-lar”, which translates as have you had rice? 

TABLE: What led you to focus on food as a journalist? 

TLW: I've always been interested in that topic but it wasn't actually really until 10 years ago when I was back home in Myanmar to set up an investigative news agency that I had this what you would call a light bulb moment. 

I was back home and I was interviewing the then country director of the UN’s World Food Program in Myanmar. And I was asking him questions around why food insecurity and malnutrition were still so high despite almost always being a food surplus country, even during decades of military dictatorship. 

It was due to rice. Our diets weren’t diverse enough. Malnutrition and food insecurity are high in a lot of minority ethnic areas, not because of a problem with availability, but because of access or affordability. That's when I really started to see food and climate issues not in isolation or as a response to an emergency but as a political economy problem. Who holds the power? Who makes those policies? Who has economic interests around how food is produced, distributed and consumed not just in Myanmar but around the world. 

TABLE: What are the food interconnections between South East Asia and the global economy? 

TLW: Take just two countries; Indonesia and Malaysia. I suspect their palm oil exports reach almost every continent on earth. We're talking about an extremely interconnected world. 

Anybody that's really interested in cutting edge food technology, Southeast Asia is a really interesting place. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world and they are very interested in making their food systems self-sufficient in part because it's a very small country and it is very much dependent on imports to feed its population. So they've been very forward looking when it comes to investing in the latest food technology. They're one of the few countries I think in the world with the money and the political will to do it. Singapore and the United States are the only two countries that have set up the regulatory process for cell-based meat. 

Southeast Asia is 11 countries and a region of 700 million people. I know that the political winds are blowing in very different directions, but I truly think you cannot just ignore what's happening in one corner of the world and think you'd be sort of immune from what's happening there.

TABLE: Even if you just take palm oil and deforestation. If you care about climate change, biodiversity and UPFS, Southeast Asia is hugely important. 

TLW: So true. We know about the Amazon basin. We know about the Congo basin. But Southeast Asia has the third largest intact rainforest (but being lost at the fastest rate) yet people don’t think about Southeast Asia in the same way.

TABLE: Do you get the sense that it's not included in global food system debates as perhaps it should be?

TWL: I think you hit the nail on the head. I can only speculate as to why. 

If you look at the countries and the political system of countries in Southeast Asia, they're all very closed. A lot have issues around their democratic governance. I don't want to use these massive brushstrokes around major regions but Southeast Asia tends to get forgotten because in some ways it's not conflict ridden in the same way, apart from Myanmar where I’m from. It's not affected by the same geopolitical forces as in Europe, the Americas and I guess Africa.

TABLE: You described land as a unifying challenge in the region, can you expand on this? 

One similarity across almost all Southeast Asian countries is widespread poverty among farmers. And part of the reason is access to land. There's so much competition for land whether you're an agrarian country or you're a developed country. One of the reasons why Singapore is so laser focused on food tech is because it doesn't have the land it needs to grow its own food. And then in other countries you have conflict around land grabs and land use, ranging from farmland expansion, particularly for cash crops like palm oil and rubber. That then encroaches on land for food. Then you have a lot of big agri businesses in Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar where they are very closely aligned with the political elite.

I would say it has become worse, particularly with the threat of climate change and the concern around global supply chains. People are trying to get access to as much land as possible. 

This is a massive barrier to transforming food systems in these countries, particularly if you've got a small number of agribusinesses or owners that have access to a vast majority of the land and will be interested in focusing on cash crops, monoculture, and industrial scale agriculture. 

Some economists think it's much more efficient for a small number of owners to have vast quantities of land. But it's also a recipe for communal conflict. It's a recipe for a continued focus on productivity versus nutrition versus environmental protection versus a more equitable access to land and livelihood and income.

TABLE: Finally, what are you optimistic about in Southeast Asia? What gives you hope?

TLW: Not the governments of Southeast Asia, but we have a new generation of journalists, activists, farmers and civil society organisations that I have met over the past few years. They are deeply engaged in these issues in a way that I have not seen in the past and despite all the challenges. 

In Myanmar, there's currently a civil war going on because of a military coup in 2021. It's in a bad way in terms of nutrition and hunger. And yet, people that I have spoken to, the younger generation of people who grew up in Myanmar, deeply care about fairness and equality. They deeply care about the environment, they deeply care about biodiversity, and want to build a better country. 

And I see the similarity at least in the younger generation of Thai, Indonesian and Filipino journalists and activists that I have met. So it's a bit of a cliché, but I'm hopeful that the new generation has a better grasp on things.

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Next edition of FODDER

This is part of FODDER’s series on food system debates across the world. Click here to read about West Africa, Latin America and Oceans. Next edition is about the U.S. where I’m speaking to Jesse Hirsch, editor of Ambrook Research, a food and farming magazine in the States. Rather than the big picture issues, we’ll discuss the key debates among his readers, predominantly farmers and those working in the sector. 

"I’ve been reading FODDER for quite some time, and I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the recent interview with Dr Ibrahima Hathie (about West Africa). I particularly appreciated the nuanced discussion of agribusiness and agroecology—topics that are often framed in overly simplistic, binary terms." 

Dr. J.C. Niala, Head of research at the History of Science Museum at Oxford University