The Protein Sovereignty Index

Regional assessment

Northeast Asia (other)

We assess Northeast Asia (other) as Critically exposed (33.1). Each of its three states fails differently: Taiwan's protein system fails if a sea lane closes, North Korea's has already failed and operates below nutritional adequacy, and Mongolia's has been drawn beyond the carrying capacity of its grassland.

Mongolia supplies 97.3 grams of animal protein per person per day, the second-highest level in the world after Iceland, while North Korea supplies 11.8 grams.[2]

Access, affordability and crisis purchasing power divide the region the same way: Taiwan clears conventional affordability and nutrition checks comfortably, Mongolia's affordability position is weaker than an earlier reading of the same series showed but still clears its own outcome checks, and North Korea has no World Bank/FAO affordability estimate at all and has never joined the IMF or the World Bank, leaving its capacity to buy through a shock at effectively zero.

Covers: Mongolia, North Korea, Taiwan

The protein system

Three states share a corner of the map and the same two giant neighbours, and their protein systems fail in three different ways. Combined population was 53.2 million in 2023: Taiwan 23.32 million, North Korea 26.42 million and Mongolia 3.43 million, for population shares of 43.9, 49.7 and 6.5 per cent.[17][18] Where a pillar treats the three members as separate blocks, we combine them by population share. By protein intake rather than headcount, the weight shifts: Taiwan accounts for 54 per cent of regional protein consumption, North Korea 35 per cent and Mongolia 11 per cent, a separate fact worth holding alongside the population split rather than a substitute for it.

Taiwan eats like a rich economy and produces like a crowded island. Protein supply was 98.8 grams per person per day in 2023, 56.7 grams of it animal, on meat supply of 91.5 kilograms per person per year.[16][2] Domestic output covers 87 per cent of pigmeat, 76 per cent of poultry and 96 per cent of eggs, against 31 per cent of milk and 3.8 per cent of beef,[2] all of it resting on 4.55 million tonnes of imported maize and 2.8 million tonnes of imported soybeans.[5]

North Korea eats less than it needs and produces most of what it eats. FAO's last food balance sheet, for 2018, records 56.9 grams of protein per person per day and 1,981 kcal against a requirement of about 2,404 kcal.[1][2] Meat supply was 13.8 kilograms per person per year, a seventh of Taiwan's, and pulses carried 6.3 grams of protein per day, over half as much as all animal products combined.[2] Mongolia eats meat and little else: 136.1 kilograms per person per year plus 186.8 kilograms of milk against 1.03 kilograms of fish,[2] off 106.3 million hectares of pasture grazed by 58.1 million head at the end of 2025.[3][10]

Durable domestic capacity: 31

Quantitative score 34, adjusted down 3 points

The indicators put capacity at 34; we deduct 3, taking the pillar to 31. The nominal ratios mislead. North Korea and Mongolia both post high meat self-sufficiency, 97.5 and 102.7 per cent,[2] and neither is a strong producer in any sense the index recognises. North Korea's ratio is high because consumption has been compressed to what domestic output can meet: undernourishment ran at 47 per cent in 2017-19, affecting 12.2 million people,[1] and 45.5 per cent for 2020-22,[28] with the WFP estimating 10.7 million undernourished and 18 per cent of children stunted.[26] Mongolia's ratio is high because the herd is large, and the herd has just shown how quickly it is not: 71.1 million head at the end of 2022, 64.7 million a year later, 57.6 million at the end of 2024, a net loss of 10.9 per cent in one year.[9][11] At 58.1 million in 2025 it remains 18 per cent below peak.[10]

Taiwan's capacity is the most legible and among the thinnest. Official energy-weighted food self-sufficiency was 30.3 per cent in 2023, an eighteen-year low.[19][21] Rice is the one staple in surplus, at 1,050,000 tonnes against 1,050,000 tonnes of consumption,[5] and it is why the island can plan for a siege at all. Cereal self-sufficiency is 21.7 per cent, and 57.4 per cent of cereals in domestic supply are fed to animals.[2] The October 2025 detection of African swine fever in Taichung, Taiwan's first, removed the assumption that 87 per cent pork self-sufficiency is a stable floor.[25]

The adjustment reflects erosion the ratios cannot show. FAOSTAT records Mongolian pasture falling from 110.9 million hectares in 2022 to 106.3 million in 2023,[3] while goats have risen from roughly a quarter of the herd before 1990 to 39.8 per cent of head count:[9] a cashmere-driven shift that grazes rangeland harder per unit of protein. North Korean cropland has been pushed onto deforested slopes and was flooded severely in both 2023 and 2024.[27]

Resource headroom: 27

Quantitative score 31, adjusted down 4 points

The indicators put headroom at 31; we deduct 4, taking the pillar to 27. Taiwan and North Korea sit near the global floor on land: 0.03 and 0.10 hectares of cropland per person against Mongolia's 0.33.[3] Taiwan's constraint is compounded by dietary composition. Of its 7,988 thousand tonnes of cereal supply, 4,589 go to feed, and a further 664,000 tonnes of fish and seafood, 48 per cent of domestic fish supply, is fed rather than eaten.[2] Water binds second: only 47.8 per cent of cropland is irrigation-equipped,[3] reservoir refill depends on an unpredictable typhoon season,[6] and the 2023 fall in self-sufficiency came from drought-related irrigation cuts to paddy.[19] The irrigation-equipped share has crept up from 44.5 per cent in 2000 to 47.9 per cent in 2024, but only because cropland itself shrank 8.7 per cent over the period, 12.2 per cent per person; the equipped area in absolute terms fell.[41] A 2013 fallow-land reactivation scheme did put real idle land back to work, cutting declared fallow area from 200,000 to 112,000 hectares in two years and adding NT$17.84 billion of production value,[45] but it is a lever already pulled rather than headroom still waiting: the underlying cropland base kept contracting either side of it.

North Korea scores better here than on any other pillar for an uncomfortable reason. Its protein mix is resource-cheap because it is barely animal: only 272,000 tonnes of cereals, 4.6 per cent of supply, went to livestock in 2018, and the country holds 50,000 hectares of permanent pasture in total, 0.42 per cent of land area.[2][3] Maize, rice and pulses convert land into protein far more efficiently than pork does. Set against that, 57.3 per cent of cropland is already irrigation-equipped and fully committed,[3] and the equipped area has been fixed at 1.46 million hectares in FAOSTAT's series since 2000, unchanged for over two decades.[41] Cropland has grown only 2.8 per cent over the same period, almost entirely through tideland reclamation: the Taegyedo project alone added 17,000 hectares by its completion in 2010, and roughly 200 square kilometres more has been reclaimed since across a dozen project areas on the west coast, output independent analysts describe as delivering minimal relief to food shortages and serving political display more than production.[46][47]

Mongolia holds the region's only physical headroom and cannot deploy it when it matters, which is where the adjustment falls. Dzud is a winter forage problem rather than a summer grazing problem, and Mongolia can barely store the summer surplus: 50,737 hectares were actually irrigated in 2023, 0.05 per cent of agricultural land, and FAOSTAT's own series puts the equipped irrigation base at roughly 88,000 hectares in both 2000 and 2024, unmoved for over two decades.[3][41] White and iron dzud covered over 76 per cent of the country between November 2023 and March 2024.[15] Mongolia's cropland, the sliver of land this pillar can otherwise credit, tells the same story: it rose to a peak of 1.33 million hectares in 2015 under the 2008 Atar-3 campaign and had given back 15 per cent of that gain by 2024.[41] A new Atar-4 campaign, financed by an 800 billion tugrik loan facility signed in February 2025 through the Bank of Mongolia and ten commercial banks, now targets a further 200,000 hectares of cropland and 200,000 head of higher-yielding cattle by 2028,[44] more livestock without a stated fodder-storage commitment being the same overshoot mechanism that produced the 2022-24 dzud losses. No agriculture-specific credit series exists in FAOSTAT for any of the three members: Taiwan and North Korea report no data to the domain at all, and Mongolia reports only undifferentiated Total Credit,[42] so the land indicators sit on top of no visible capital channel beyond the Atar loan facility itself. Land area registers as abundance in any indicator and means nothing during the four months that decide whether animals live.

Import exposure: 23

Quantitative score 26, adjusted down 3 points

The indicators put import exposure at 26; we deduct 3, taking the pillar to 23. This is the region's worst pillar and the reason for the tier. Taiwan imported 78.3 per cent of its cereals in 2021-23[1] and moves over 8 million tonnes of grain and oilseed a year across open ocean.[6] Supplier concentration reads moderately by conventional measures, and the measures mislead: Herfindahl indices of 0.68 for wheat (80.7 per cent United States), 0.48 for soybeans (95.5 per cent Brazil and the United States) and 0.40 for maize (49.4 per cent Brazil, 37.8 per cent United States).[8] Four continents of origin diversification is worth nothing when the delivery leg is identical for all of them and the only actor capable of interdicting it is the actor that claims the island. Taiwan discharges roughly nine bulk vessels a month and holds little storage for anything but rice.[6] Beef is 96.5 per cent imported.[5]

Mongolia's exposure is smaller in volume and worse in structure. Cereal import dependency was 39.3 per cent in 2021-23,[1] and in 2023 it took 99.9 per cent of its wheat and all of its wheat flour from Russia and 94.3 per cent of its poultry from China.[8] There is no third option: it is landlocked between the two suppliers on a rail network carrying 0.1 kilometres of route per 100 square kilometres.[1] China accounts for 72 per cent of Mongolian trade.[30]

North Korea's cereal import dependency of 19 per cent[1] is the region's lowest and is no strength. Food imports equalled 136 per cent of merchandise export earnings in 2022-24:[1] the country cannot afford the food it buys. Chinese customs recorded USD 1.83 billion of exports to North Korea in 2024, including 19,708 tonnes of rice and 22,422 tonnes of poultry meat.[8] Concentration on one supplier across one rail crossing is total.

The adjustment corrects both distortions: Herfindahl indices flatter Taiwan by treating politically uncorrelated origins as independent when their route risk is perfectly correlated, and flatter North Korea by scoring poverty as self-reliance.

Upstream dependence: 27

Quantitative score 30, adjusted down 3 points

The indicators put upstream dependence at 30; we deduct 3, taking the pillar to 27. Taiwan sits near the bottom of the global range. It imports every tonne of the feed maize and soybean on which its pork, poultry and eggs depend,[5] 100 per cent of its potash at 171,234 tonnes of K2O against zero domestic production,[4] almost all vegetable seed and its breeding genetics,[6] and 96 per cent of its primary energy.[22] Sixteen of its grain mills run on oil rather than electricity.[23] Crushing imported beans into 1.73 million tonnes of domestic soybean meal converts a feed dependency into a processing dependency without reducing it.

Mongolia's exposure is confined to the small part of its food system that buys inputs at all. All 50,778 tonnes of nitrogen nutrient used in 2023 was imported, 97.7 per cent of fertiliser by value from Russia, and 97 to 100 per cent of petroleum products from Russia, reaching 100 per cent after China banned petroleum exports.[4][8][29] The extensive grazing that produces almost all Mongolian protein buys essentially nothing: no compound feed, no fertiliser, no genetics at scale.

North Korea's imported-input reliance is genuinely low because its livestock sector is too small to need feed. The pillar measures dependence on imported inputs rather than their adequacy, so it scores mid-range while remaining input-starved.

The adjustment corrects one artefact. FAOSTAT credits Taiwan with 63,452 tonnes of domestic nitrogen production against 117,634 tonnes of use,[4] which reads as half-sovereign. That ammonia is synthesised from imported gas on an island importing 96 per cent of its energy, so the domestic half fails in the same scenario as the imported half.

Access and affordability: 50

Quantitative score 50, no adjustment applied

The indicators put access and affordability at 50, with no adjustment applied. This pillar is priced as three population blocks on their own evidence rather than as a single composite, because North Korea has no measurable affordability series to build one on. Weighted 43.9 per cent Taiwan, 49.7 per cent North Korea, 6.5 per cent Mongolia by population, each block stands on a different kind of evidence, stated in full below.

Taiwan is priced on measured outcomes: 4.3 per cent of the population unable to afford a healthy diet on the World Bank/FAO Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet series, a genuine decline from 7.9 per cent in 2017,[33] 3.6 per cent undernourishment,[1] and food inflation of 2.49 per cent year on year in July 2026.[35] The two outcome measures that do not depend on the same purchasing-power data, undernourishment and food inflation, corroborate the same strong position independently. This block scores 85.

Mongolia is priced on a genuine measured estimate: 31.5 per cent of Mongolians could not afford a healthy diet in 2024,[33] against undernourishment under 2.5 per cent and stunting of 8.8 per cent.[1][34] Weighed against that reading are two pressures the affordability headcount does not itself capture: beef and mutton stood 20 to 40 per cent above year-earlier prices in January 2026 with flour at record levels,[12] and herders sit furthest from the region's thin rail network, 0.1 kilometres per 100 square kilometres.[1] This block scores 53.

North Korea has no Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet estimate, sitting outside the price surveys the indicator depends on, and no alternative income or expenditure survey exists to build one. Its block is priced instead on the evidence that does exist: FAO's most recent measurement puts undernourishment at 47 per cent of the population in 2017-19,[1] the highest reading recorded for any population in this index. The World Food Programme records stunting at 19.1 per cent on the last Joint Malnutrition Estimate, restated by WFP in 2025 as affecting nearly one in five children, and describes the Public Distribution System as consistently delivering rations below its own target, leaving rural households reliant on kitchen gardens and market purchases.[26][34] Pyongyang rice prices rose 93 per cent in fourteen months, from 4,300 to 8,300 won per kilogram between December 2023 and February 2025.[27] This is a documented history of chronic undernourishment, a rationing system that under-delivers by design, and price behaviour consistent with a population absorbing shocks through the market rather than through savings: evidence a score can rest on even without a single affordability number. This block scores 18.

The population-weighted result across the three blocks is 43.9 per cent of 85 plus 49.7 per cent of 18 plus 6.5 per cent of 53, which is 50. No adjustment applies: Taiwan's series is a confirmed decline, not a suspiciously flat reading, so no reliability caveat applies, and North Korea's absent affordability figure is priced directly inside its own block rather than treated as a coverage gap requiring a separate deduction.

Shock endurance: 43

Quantitative score 40, adjusted up 3 points

The indicators put endurance at 40; we add 3, taking the pillar to 43. The region's least bad pillar, very unevenly held, and folding in crisis purchasing power widens rather than narrows the gap. Taiwan is the only member with a plan. It held 5.5 months of public grain reserves as of March 2025, rising to eight or nine months after a good harvest and about a year including private stocks, against a statutory floor of three months;[22][20] USDA puts rice stocks-to-use at 30 per cent.[5] Preparation extends past tonnage: 143 distribution stations, a standing monthly national food inventory, a documented plan to switch farmland to rice, sweet potato, soybean and vegetables, and a rule requiring three months of fish feed so pond aquaculture can substitute if sea fishing is barred.[20][22] Being paid for and running rather than merely announced, this grounds the positive adjustment, capped at +3 because Taiwan's energy cover is far shorter than its food cover.

Mongolia's endurance is informal and real. It holds wheat ending stocks equal to 5.6 per cent of use and no disclosed protein reserve.[5] What it has instead is a live herd distributed across herder households and a consumption level of 136 kilograms of meat per person per year that can absorb very large cuts before anyone is malnourished. The system is nonetheless under stress: the 2025 wheat harvest came in 40 per cent below the five-year average, January 2026 beef and mutton prices stood 20 to 40 per cent above a year earlier with flour at record highs, and flour import tariffs were suspended from 24 December 2025 to 1 April 2026.[12] The 2024 dzud alone cost 3.15 per cent of GDP.[14]

North Korea holds almost nothing in reserve. USDA records zero ending stocks of rice, maize and wheat,[5] there is no fiscal capacity to outbid on world markets, and the diet cannot be compressed further. Pyongyang market rice roughly doubled to 8,300 won per kilogram between December 2023 and February 2025.[27] Ordinary volatility already causes acute stress.

Crisis purchasing power adds a fourth axis to the same divide rather than a new one. Taiwan held USD 594.3 billion in foreign exchange reserves in July 2026,[36] around eleven months of its own import bill on H1 2026 trade data, and nearer nine and a half at the record June 2026 run-rate,[37] among the largest reserve stockpiles held by any economy in the index, with deep capital-market access behind it. Mongolia held USD 7.7 billion in reserves in June 2026,[38] covering a more modest six to seven months of imports,[39] respectable for a lower-middle-income economy but exposed to the commodity swings that periodically send it back to IMF-supported programmes, with the Child Money Programme its main lever for scaling household support in a crisis. North Korea has neither reserves nor market access to fall back on: it is one of only three UN member states outside the IMF, alongside Monaco and Cuba, and unlike Cuba, which joined in 1945 and withdrew in 1964, it has never been a member at all.[40] It discloses no reserve position to any international institution. Crisis purchasing power scores 43, computed as a population-weighted blend of the three members, almost entirely on Taiwan's reserve position. The indicators, combined with the physical evidence, put the pillar at 40.

Trajectory

Nothing in view changes this picture materially, and two things could worsen it.

Taiwan's direction is preparation rather than production. The 2024 memorandum of cooperation with the United States established a mechanism intended to secure continuity of grain supply,[6] and USDA expects grain imports to hold steady through 2026/27 as the rice Comprehensive Upgrade Plan aligns production with consumption.[7] The 40 per cent self-sufficiency target set for 2020 was missed widely and the ratio has fallen since; with 520,000 hectares in production against an aspiration of 740,000 to 810,000,[24] reactivating fallow land is the only lever with real upside, and it raises calories rather than protein. The variable that would change Taiwan's picture is not agricultural: deployment of United States anti-ship and air-defence systems in the Luzon Strait in July 2026[32] shows how the principal risk is being managed, and any move from deterrence towards quarantine would convert Taiwan's import exposure from scenario into fact within weeks.

Mongolia's trajectory depends on whether the herd rebuilds towards 71 million head or is managed towards a smaller, better-fed, better-sheltered one. The former repeats the cycle, and the goat composition problem is a price signal no announced policy has reversed. Fuel diversification away from Russia, including March 2026 talks with Kazakhstan and a long-delayed refinery, remains prospective rather than funded,[29] so both the crop sector and the supply chain run on one supplier's diesel.

North Korea's trajectory cannot be assessed with confidence, which is itself the finding. FAO reported generally favourable prospects for the 2025 main season and 2025/26 winter crops,[13] and January 2025 sanctions exemptions let it resume technical support on feed production and wheat and barley cultivation.[27] Against that, no crop and food security assessment mission or IPC analysis has run since 2019, FAO's fishery series shows aquaculture flat near 685,000 tonnes and capture landings drifting to 208,000 tonnes,[31] and every protein figure available is from 2018 or earlier. A state that has held its population at 47 per cent undernourishment through periods of both engagement and isolation has shown that its food system is a policy choice as much as an agronomic outcome.

Country notes

Taiwan. Fifty-four per cent of regional protein consumption and the most blockade-exposed advanced food system in the index: food self-sufficiency 30.3 per cent, cereals 21.7 per cent, maize 2 per cent, rice self-sufficient;[19][2][5] nine bulk vessels a month, no land route, 96 per cent energy import dependence.[6][22] Best-prepared member by a wide margin, and least able to survive the specific shock it faces.

North Korea. Thirty-five per cent of regional consumption and the lowest-scoring member: 47 per cent undernourishment, 1,981 kcal per person per day against a 2,404 kcal requirement, 11.8 grams of animal protein.[1][2] Nominally near-autarkic, with zero recorded grain stocks, food imports at 136 per cent of merchandise export earnings and effectively all trade through China.[5][1][8] The oldest data in the index, and no current assessment.

Mongolia. Eleven per cent of regional consumption and the only genuine producer: 97.3 grams of animal protein per person per day, the second-highest level in the world after Iceland, meat self-sufficiency 103 per cent, milk 88 per cent.[2] Everything else imported, with wheat 99.9 per cent Russian, flour and nitrogen fertiliser wholly imported and poultry 94.3 per cent Chinese.[8][4] Herd 71.1 million head in 2022, 57.6 million in 2024, 58.1 million in 2025,[9][10] the 2025 wheat harvest 40 per cent below average and prices still rising in January 2026.[12]

Country notes

Taiwan
The region's dominant consumer, 54 per cent of its protein intake, and the most blockade-exposed advanced food system in the index. Energy-weighted food self-sufficiency was 30.3 per cent in 2023, an eighteen-year low, and while rice runs at 104 per cent, cereals overall are 21.7 per cent and maize 2 per cent, so the 73 per cent meat self-sufficiency rests on 4.55 million tonnes of imported maize and 2.8 million tonnes of imported soybeans landed at roughly nine bulk vessels a month. Suppliers span four continents, which the Herfindahl indices reward, and none of it matters if the sea lane closes: there is no land route, no alternative port geography and 96 per cent energy import dependence behind the cold chain and the oil-fired grain mills. Against that, Taipei has the region's only serious preparation, 5.5 months of public grain reserves against a three-month statutory floor, 143 distribution stations, a monthly national inventory and a documented cropping-switch plan. Its first African swine fever detection in October 2025 removed the assumption that its 87 per cent pork self-sufficiency is stable.
North Korea
The lowest-scoring member and, on the most recent FAO measurement, the most undernourished population in the index: 47 per cent prevalence of undernourishment in 2017-19, 1,981 kcal per person per day in 2018 against a requirement of about 2,404, and 11.8 grams of animal protein per day, roughly an eighth of Mongolia's. It is nominally near-autarkic, producing 97 per cent of its meat, 100 per cent of its eggs and 71 per cent of its cereals, with only 50,000 hectares of permanent pasture in the whole country and 57 per cent of cropland irrigation-equipped. That autarky is enforced by an inability to pay rather than chosen: food imports equalled 136 per cent of total merchandise export earnings in 2022-24, USDA records zero ending stocks of rice, maize and wheat, and effectively all trade runs through China, which shipped USD 1.83 billion of goods including 19,708 tonnes of rice and 22,422 tonnes of poultry in 2024. Pyongyang market rice roughly doubled between December 2023 and February 2025. The data is the oldest in the index and the direction of travel cannot be verified.
Mongolia
The region's only genuine protein producer and, at 97.3 grams of animal protein per person per day, the second-highest level recorded anywhere in the world, behind only Iceland (106.5 g/capita/day). Meat self-sufficiency is 103 per cent, milk 88 per cent, and 136 kilograms of meat per person per year gives the deepest consumption buffer of any entity in the index. Every other protein is imported: poultry is 94.3 per cent Chinese, eggs 52 per cent self-sufficient, fish essentially absent, and wheat 99.9 per cent Russian with wheat flour 100 per cent Russian. The 106.3 million hectares of pasture is real but demonstrably overshot; the herd peaked at 71.1 million head in 2022, dzud removed 7.03 million net in 2024 alone at a cost of 3.15 per cent of GDP and 30.9 per cent of agricultural output, and at 58.1 million head in 2025 it remains 18 per cent below peak. The 2025 wheat harvest came in at 282,000 tonnes, 40 per cent below the five-year average, and by January 2026 beef and mutton were 20 to 40 per cent above year-earlier prices with flour at records. Nitrogen fertiliser is 100 per cent imported and 97.7 per cent Russian, petroleum 97 to 100 per cent Russian, on a rail network with 0.1 kilometres of route per 100 square kilometres.

Sources

  1. Food Security Indicators (suite of food security indicators) · FAOSTAT (2026 (data to 2023-2025))
  2. Food Balance Sheets · FAOSTAT (2025 (data to 2023))
  3. Land Use · FAOSTAT (2026 (data to 2023))
  4. Fertilizers by Nutrient · FAOSTAT (2025 (data to 2023))
  5. Production, Supply and Distribution database (grains, oilseeds, livestock, dairy) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026 (July 2026 release))
  6. Taiwan Food Security Situation Overview (TW2024-0030) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN (2024)
  7. Taiwan: Grain and Feed Annual · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN (2026)
  8. UN Comtrade database (Taiwan, Mongolia and China-DPRK bilateral trade) · United Nations Statistics Division (2026 (data 2023-2024))
  9. Livestock Census, January to December 2024 (published 16 January 2025) · National Statistics Office of Mongolia (2025)
  10. Mongolia's number of livestock up by 0.8 pct in 2025 (National Statistics Office data) · Xinhua (2025)
  11. Mongolia counts 64.7 million head of livestock · Montsame (Mongolian National News Agency) (2024)
  12. GIEWS Country Brief: Mongolia · FAO Global Information and Early Warning System (2026)
  13. GIEWS Country Brief: Democratic People's Republic of Korea · FAO Global Information and Early Warning System (2025)
  14. CPR evaluated the major impacts of the 2023-2024 dzud on the livestock sector of Mongolia · Centre for Policy Research, Mongolia (2025)
  15. Mongolia: Dzud Response Plan, March 2024 update · United Nations in Mongolia (2024)
  16. Daily protein supply from animal and plant-based foods (FAO Food Balance Sheets) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
  17. Population (UN World Population Prospects) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
  18. World Development Indicators: population and GDP per capita · World Bank (2026 (data 2024))
  19. Food self-sufficiency rate at 18-year low: ministry · Taipei Times (2024)
  20. Taiwan mapping out food plans in the event of war · Taipei Times (2024)
  21. Taiwan's food self-sufficiency rate drops to 30.3% · Focus Taiwan (CNA) (2024)
  22. Minister says Taiwan's food reserves would last 1 year under China blockade · Taiwan News (2025)
  23. If Push Comes to Shove, Would Taiwan Starve? · Taiwan Business TOPICS (AmCham Taiwan) (2023)
  24. Review of Taiwan's Food Security Strategy · FFTC Agricultural Policy Platform (2020)
  25. Taiwan reports its first case of African swine fever and culls scores of pigs · Associated Press via Phys.org (2025)
  26. DPR Korea country page · World Food Programme (2025)
  27. Despite offers of international aid, food security in North Korea remains critical · Welthungerhilfe Global Food Journal (2025)
  28. 46% of North Koreans undernourished, UN report says (report of the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council) · The Korea Times (2025)
  29. Mongolia to buy 100% of petroleum products from Russia, vice minister · TASS (2026)
  30. Mongolia's gas pipeline diversification comes with risk · ORF America (2025)
  31. Capture fishery and aquaculture production (FAO FishStat) · Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
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  34. World Development Indicators: Prevalence of stunting, height for age (% of children under 5) (SH.STA.STNT.ZS), sourced from the UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Joint Malnutrition Estimates · World Bank (2026)
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  48. Perspective: Farmland conversations, North Korea failures · UPI Voices (2026)

What we could not measure

North Korea's food balance data stops at 2018, so every protein-supply and calorie figure used for it is at least seven years old, and no field food-security assessment has been run there since 2019: the widely cited estimate of 10.7 million undernourished is a standing WFP figure, not a current survey. No affordability-of-a-healthy-diet reading exists for North Korea, and its most recent child stunting figure dates to 2017. Taiwan's own affordability figure has read an identical 5.7 per cent every year since 2017.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced