The 44th Meeting of the ASEAN Food Security Reserve Board (AFSRB) convened on June 5-6, 2024 at the AMERI Hotel in Vang Vieng, Lao PDR.

In the opening session, it was honored by Mr. Bounchanh Kombounyasith, Director General of Department of Agriculture from Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Lao PDR. The session was attended by delegates from ASEAN Member States, including Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand as well as representatives from related organizations, including the AFSRB Secretariat, the ASEAN Secretariat, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve (APTERR) Secretariat, and the ASEAN Food Security Information System (AFSIS)Secretariat included. Sumanya Ngandee, AFSIS Manager, and Mr. Thanapat Chukaew, Agricultural Statistical Reporting Officer attended.

The objective of the meeting was to review the current status of food security, along with the challenges and opportunities faced by each country during 2023-2024. Key discussions centered on statistics related to the agriculture production, consumption, trade, and food reserves of primary crops such as rice, sugarcane, maize, and soybeans in ASEAN region, considering the impacts of climate change, rising agricultural input costs, and fluctuating supply costs.Furthermore, a presentation on the “Preliminary study on local resource-based food reserve (LRBFR)” by ERIA. The objective of LRBFR is related the increasing the overall productivity of agriculture and aiming to increase efforts to create cooperation among ASEAN member countries in sustainably maintaining food which proposes the concept note or discussion paper on the mechanism of LRBFR as proposed in the “ASEAN Leader’s Declaration on Strengthening Food Security and Nutrition in Response to Crises”.

During AFSIS's participation, Dr. Sumanya Ngandee presented the progress of the AFSIS activities for 2023 – 2024 (Q1). The report included updates on various initiatives and issues, the benefits of AFSIS data, and reports to member countries. Additionally, AFSIS informed about the future work plan, which includes a regional workshop and INAHOR activities on the SAFER project, aimed at collecting and sharing food security information of ASEAN member states and strengthening the AFSIS function emergency information sharing mechanism. Moreover, AFSIS is enhancing and progressing toward future sustainability, with the strengthening of existing roles and functions to establish AFSIS as a permanent mechanism to support food security information for ASEAN region.

The meeting concluded successfully with Mr. Bounsu Soudmaly, Deputy of Director General from Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Lao PDR delivering to closing remark and expressing a great appreciation to all participants.