Syngenta launches food security index

Swiss group Syngenta, the world's largest agrochemicals company, has launched an index to measure different countries' capacity to address food security issues.

The company plans to use the index as a tool to engage in dialogue with governments.

"The index is a simple presentation of the complex issue of food security", and intends to show the major drivers for food security tensions, Andrew McConville, Syngenta's head of Corporate Affairs in the Asia-Pacific region said on June 6.

The company plans to use the index as a tool that could lead to collaboration with governments and other industry players, he said.

McConville added that the company is considering approaching relevant departments in the Chinese government with the problems reflected in this index.

The index, named the Rice Bowl index, assesses how resilient a country is in maintaining food security, rather than measuring the actual level of food security in different countries.

The index has four items, each addressing an aspect of food security, namely the country's policies and trade, environmental factors, farm-level factors, and demand and price.

According to the index, China's food security performance has continued to improve over the four-year period that started in 2008. By contrast, the country's performance in the demand and price item, which indicates the influence of food demand and price on food security, has declined steadily from 2008 to 2010 before a moderate recovery in 2011.

The company didn't want to publish a ranking of countries in the index, because different countries have different approaches, McConville said.

The index - entirely based on public data - was put together by the Frontier Strategy Group, an information services and corporate advisory firm that focuses on emerging markets, with an independent analysis conducted by Paul Teng, a professor at the Singapore-based Nanyang Technological University.

Syngenta provided the concept and funding for the project.