Providing food for all populations is of paramount importance in each country’s development and food security. However, some people claim that each country should produce food for their entire population and put barriers on importing food. I disagree with this thinking, despite acknowledging the reasons underpinning it.
Granted, one might question the benefits of countries’ self-sufficiency in food, saying that providing food for the entire population and limiting the utilization of foreign food products can boost the local economy. This facilitates the increasing demand for domestically local products and the saving on the expenditure of food miles. In tandem with this, reducing expenditure on foreign food products not only saves transport costs but also reduces the dependence on fossil fuels, thereby contributing to environmental protection. However, this thinking is deeply flawed. This perspective oversimplifies the reality, that if we were increasing farming, the chemical inputs would become more increasing. The environment ultimately has to bear the extreme repercussions because of the chemical excessive discharge. By the same token, the weather patterns of countries are different. Therefore, in some countries that have no advantageous climate environment to produce food, and is almost impossible to provide a wider range of food items to meet the diverse demands of their citizens that tend to import food from other countries. Wheat, for example, is a product grown in regions with temperate climates, putting producing it under strain for Vietnam since has a tropical monsoon climate. The implication of this, Vietnam has to shift towards from self-producing to importing food from neighboring countries.
Given the aforementioned problems, I am convinced that intervening in allocating foods and putting barriers to importing food is not a sensible approach and that the government should turn to other measures. One such approach is raising public awareness of the dire consequences attached to excessively employing chemicals on the environment. Incentivizing the technology development in tandem with diversifying agricultural production, thereby diversifying local products and contributing to meeting the demand of citizens. But such a measure should not be reduced and executed in tandem with reducing import tax. This encourages countries to enhance their competitive advantage, ensuring a stable food supply with other partner countries, thereby paving the way for each country’s sustainable development.
In conclusion, for the reasons elaborated above, I would doubt the efficacy of self-producing food and the limitation of importing food in acting as a catalyst for the local economy country’s development and environmental protection. Instead of interfering with self-distributing and cutting down on importing food, the government should ramp up its efforts to educate the public and promote the efficacy of technology, and tax methods to generate various local foods and approach importing foods. By doing so, the number of those having overweight problems could be curbed.