Author：Chang, Jing-Wen^1,3, Rhung-Jieh Woo² and Huang-Ping Yen¹

Abstract：

    The main purpose of this study was deliberate major developed foreign countries’ food security policies and contingency mechanism, interrogation domestic food security countermeasures. On the basis of previous studies, we tried to figure out a set of early warning system to measure food security situation and so the system put forward corresponding countermeasures as a reference. Our study distinguish the food security index into five levels as traffic light such as "blue", "blue-yellow", "yellow", "yellow-red" and "red".

    The empirical results show that from 1992 to 2004 the overall food security scores were higher than average level, which were "blue light". But since 2005, higher and higher cereal prices and oil prices, made food safety level from "blue" fall to"blue- yellow". Furthermore, with 2008 global financial tsunami, and the same time that oil prices and international food prices reached a record high, resulting in a further decline in the overall food safety to "yellow light", induce government needs to imply short-term coping strategies. Because the effective countermeasures, the overall light was "blue-yellow" in 2010, improve to "blue" at 2011.

    The results showed that season 1~3 of 2013, overall early warning of food security indexs are above-average, are the "blue lights". But under various dimensions that indicate food insecurity were mainly caused by fluctuations in international food prices and food unsafety. The government needs to apply long-, mid- and short-run contingency mechanisms to reduce the degree of influence by international food prices, and to strengthen of reducing pesticide from the begining, so can make consumer eat more safety.

Keywords: Food Security Index, Traffic light, Early warning system, Coping strategies.

¹ Department of Business Adminstration, Hsuan Chuang University.
² Department of Agricultrual Economics, National Taiwan University.
³ Corresponding Author, Email: jingwen.chang@gmail.com; Tel: 886-3-5302255#5559.