Southeast Asians stopped worrying about food, right before the next big drought

Good news can make people careless. Elyssa Kaur Ludher of Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute went through this year's Southeast Asia Climate Outlook Survey and found that worry about food is fading across the region. The share of people very concerned that climate change will hurt food supply or food prices within three years fell from 30.2 per cent in 2024 to 25.4 per cent. Fewer people said they had started growing their own food because of the climate, down from 25 per cent to 21.8 per cent, although Indonesia was one of four countries where that habit mostly held. Indonesians were also less likely than in 2024 to connect a flood or a drought with food running short.

Ludher's explanation is simple, and it is about rice. The past two years were wet, because a weak La Nina followed the strong El Nino of 2023 and 2024. Writing on Fulcrum, she notes that Indonesia harvested more rice, ran surpluses, and saw food prices climb more slowly. That relief is real, but the weather did the work, not any change in how exposed the country is. Forecasters now expect a record-breaking El Nino, the dry Pacific pattern that cuts harvests across this region.

The underlying scores say the same thing in a colder way. On the food security index Ludher cites, Malaysia scores 7.72 out of 10 and Vietnam 6.90, both above the global average of 6.74. Indonesia sits with the group of ASEAN countries well below that line, and the index is projected to slip further as the world warms. A country can have a cheap rice year and still be among the least protected places in its own neighbourhood.

Why it matters

Two calm years have made rice feel settled, which is exactly when households stop keeping a buffer. If food takes a big share of what you earn, the thing to watch in the coming months is your own receipts rather than the news, because prices move before anyone announces a drought. Ludher's point for governments runs the same way: irrigation, early warning and cash support are cheap to build now and expensive to improvise later.