Methodology
Expert review
The methodology and a selection of assessments were reviewed before publication by experts in food security, agricultural trade and policy, fertiliser markets, aquaculture and financial markets. Their feedback informed this edition. The scores and text are the work of the Protein Sovereignty Index team.
Tim Benton
Distinguished Fellow, Environment and Society Centre, Chatham House
Joseph Glauber
Research Fellow Emeritus, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and former Chief Economist, US Department of Agriculture
Dave Little
Professor of Aquatic Resource Development, Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling
Flavio Corsin
Founder, Scalable Impact, with a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Liverpool
Josh Linville
Vice President of Fertilizer, StoneX
Mikhail Zeldovich
Minerals and agriculture investor, and former trade negotiator, Office of the US Trade Representative
Alan Matthews
Professor Emeritus of European Agricultural Policy, Trinity College Dublin
Ian Macdonald
Chief Executive Officer, Asia Pacific, Aberdeen Investments
Steve Wiggins
Senior Research Associate, ODI Global
John Buckley
Former Co-Chief Operating Officer, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, and former Chief Operating Officer, Asia, Citadel
Definition
Protein Sovereignty: a population's ability to sustain affordable access to enough protein to meet its nutritional needs, even through disruption to production, trade and critical inputs.
The index distinguishes protein production from protein sovereignty. A country may produce heavily and remain fragile, or import heavily and remain resilient.
Why protein
Protein is where food systems are most exposed to shocks. Producing it at scale takes good land, water, feed and fertiliser, and few countries have all four to spare. Supply is concentrated as a result: Brazil and the United States shipped about 84 per cent of the world's soybean exports in 2025/26, and soy makes up nearly three-quarters of the protein meal fed to livestock (USDA, 2026). Many countries that raise their own livestock and fish still import the feed, fertiliser and fuel their farms run on.
When prices rise, poorer households cut back on meat, fish, eggs and dairy more sharply than on staples (Green et al., BMJ, 2013). So when trade or farm inputs are disrupted, protein is where diets suffer most. The index measures how well each country can protect that supply.
Scope and limits
The index measures what can be counted and documented: production, trade, inputs, prices, reserves and recorded performance under past shocks.
- Protein only. Calories, micronutrients and diet quality enter only where they bear on protein access.
- Entity level. Regional scores hide internal spread; the per-country picture sits in each regional assessment's member notes.
- One point in time. PSI 2026 reads the latest data. Movement becomes visible from the second edition.
- Grams, at the aggregate. Supply above requirement is scored as a buffer under shock endurance, and the loss of preferred protein foods from the shelves is read through the access pillar.
- Protein quality. Protein is not weighted for quality in this edition. A gram counts the same whether it comes from beans, beef or fish, although a plant-heavy diet needs more gross grams to meet the same need, as the supply buffer section in the annex notes.
- Long-run capacity. Scores measure the capacity to keep protein available and affordable over time. Current humanitarian emergencies are tracked by UN agencies and sit outside the score.
- What a score means. A score shows how much a country depends on others for protein and how hard that dependence would be to replace in a disruption.
Unit of analysis
43 entities cover the world: 28 individual countries, 2 blocs assessed as single units (the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council), and 13 regions covering all remaining countries. Regions give the index full world coverage: countries not assessed on their own are grouped with neighbours, and each region's score is the population-weighted blend of its members. A regional score describes the region as a whole, so the member notes in each regional assessment give the country picture. South Asia outside India, for example, joins Bangladesh with the Maldives, and the notes set out how each differs. North Korea is excluded because current data on its food supply are not available. Dependencies and territories are coloured with the geographic region they sit in.
Six Pillars
Each pillar is scored 0 to 100, where a higher score means more sovereign. The pillars run in causal order: what a country can produce, what that production could become, what it must bring in, what its own production depends on, whether its people can afford the result, and what happens when the system is hit.
Swipe to view all six pillars.
1Durable domestic capacity25%
How much of the population's protein needs can the country produce at home, and can that production be sustained?
Production is measured against the population it feeds, then discounted where it rests on a drawn-down aquifer, degrading soil or a collapsing fish stock.
Indicators
- Protein self-sufficiency ratio (production divided by domestic supply, total and animal protein)
- Per-capita protein supply, as context for the self-sufficiency ratio
- Sustainability of the production base (water stress, soil condition, fish-stock status)
Per-capita protein supply is FAO food balance sheet supply in grams per person per day. It positions an entity inside its band and is scored against requirement under shock endurance, where the annex defines the requirement and the scale.
Sources
FAO Food Balance Sheets; FAOSTAT production; AQUASTAT; FAO SOFIA.
2Resource headroom10%
How much primary resource does each unit of protein consume, and is there room left to grow?
The efficiency of the existing protein mix, and the room to expand it. Headroom counts only where a path to mobilising it exists: capital, infrastructure, land governance, security. Agronomic potential without such a path is disclosed but receives no score. Occupied, mined or otherwise unreachable resource is excluded rather than discounted. The evidence collected is the irrigation-equipped share of arable land and its trend, agricultural credit orientation, cropland change absolute and per head, and the outcomes of flagship expansion programmes.
Indicators
- Feed-conversion profile of the protein mix
- Share of protein from feed-intensive systems
- Wild-fishmeal reliance of aquaculture
- Arable land and freshwater headroom, discounted for realisability
- Share of crops fed to livestock
Sources
FAOSTAT; FAO SOFIA; peer-reviewed feed-conversion literature.
3Import exposure20%
How much protein must be imported, and how concentrated are those flows?
A large import bill spread across many suppliers and routes is a weaker dependency than a smaller one running through one partner or one strait.
Indicators
- Protein import dependency ratio
- Supplier concentration (Herfindahl-Hirschman index across partner countries for soy, fishmeal, meat, dairy and pulses)
- Share of imports transiting major maritime chokepoints (Hormuz, Malacca, Panama, Suez, Bab el-Mandeb, Bosphorus)
Sources
UN Comtrade; FAOSTAT trade matrix; Chatham House resourcetrade.earth.
4Upstream dependence15%
How much of domestic production relies on imported inputs, and how replaceable are they?
Import exposure one step removed. Imported feed, fertiliser, energy, genetics, medicines and equipment hollow out domestic production rather than replacing it, and are scored for concentration and substitutability. A low-input system scores well here by construction, because dependence that does not exist cannot be cut off, so a poor entity can outscore a rich one. Where that position reflects inability rather than choice, with no domestic input manufacture and no substitution route at scale, the score takes a logged deduction of four to six points, so that poverty is not read as independence.
Indicators
- Import dependence for feed protein (soymeal and fishmeal)
- Import dependence for nitrogen, phosphate and potash fertiliser
- Agricultural energy dependence
- Breeding genetics and veterinary inputs
Sources
FAOSTAT; UN Comtrade; IFA fertiliser statistics.
5Access and affordability15%
Can people across income groups and regions actually get enough protein, at prices that hold?
Supply a bottom-quintile household cannot afford does not count as sovereignty.
Indicators
- Cost of a nutritionally adequate diet relative to bottom-quintile income
- Share of the population unable to afford a healthy diet
- Prevalence of undernourishment and child stunting, as outcome checks
- Domestic food price volatility
- Physical access constraints (infrastructure, conflict-affected regions)
Sources
FAO SOFI; World Bank CoAHD and ICP; FAO GIEWS food price monitoring and analysis; WFP market monitoring; ODI Shockwatch (Wiggins and Keats).
6Shock endurance15%
How long can the system hold affordable supply when production, inputs or trade are disrupted?
What can be drawn down, rerouted or substituted, what can be bought at a crisis price, and what the entity has shown under recent disruption.
Indicators
- Stock-to-use ratios and strategic reserves
- Supply buffer: per-capita protein supply against requirement, scored on a published scale
- Substitution capacity (dietary breadth, alternative feed routes)
- Fiscal and foreign-exchange capacity to outbid on world markets
- Social protection systems that can scale in a crisis
- Recent shock performance (COVID, the Ukraine grain shock, avian influenza)
- Policy preparedness
Sources
USDA PSD; national reserve disclosures; World Bank; IMF reserve data; documented shock history.
Scoring
Each pillar score is a quantitative core from the named indicators plus a bounded adjustment of at most 15 points either way, held within 0 to 100. Both the core and the adjustment are published for every pillar of every entity.
Pi = Qi+ Aiwhere |Ai| ≤ 15 and 0 ≤ Pi ≤ 100
- Qi
- quantitative core from the pillar's named indicators
- Ai
- logged qualitative adjustment, bounded at 15 points either way
- Pi
- published pillar score, held within the 0 to 100 scale
Across the 258 adjustments in the index the largest is 12 points, so the bound is never reached: 110 negative, 91 positive, 57 at zero.
From indicators to scores
Every pillar is scored against the same five bands, then placed within its band on the indicator data.
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 80 to 100 | Among the strongest in the world; tolerates disruption |
| 65 to 79 | Strong, with manageable weaknesses |
| 50 to 64 | A single plausible disruption would expose real weaknesses |
| 35 to 49 | Structural weakness; several plausible disruptions would cause serious stress |
| 0 to 34 | Severe weakness; ordinary volatility already causes stress |
These bands apply to pillar scores and differ from the overall tiers.
Three components run directly off fixed scales. Access is anchored on the share unable to afford a healthy diet, and the crisis purchasing power and supply buffer components of endurance each carry a scale set out in the annex. The rest are analyst judgements held to the bands, a consistency review across entities and the sourcing standard below. The bands and scales are fixed, so scores compare across editions. Data years run 2022 to 2026.
Qualitative adjustments
Adjustments capture what the indicators miss. Admissible: offshore farmland with secured logistics, demonstrated wartime adaptation, conflict cutting output, funded near-term policy shifts, demonstrated substitution capacity, documented shock performance. Not admissible: unfunded targets, national pride, vendor claims. Every adjustment is logged with its entity, pillar, direction, size, justification and sources.
Adjustments rest on protein evidence. A staple food counts where it supplies at least 15 per cent of an entity's protein on FAO food balance figures: rice across South and Southeast Asia, maize in Mexico and eastern and southern Africa, cassava in Central Africa. Feed grain counts wherever it feeds livestock or fish. Calorie measures and staples below that line count only as context.
Overall score
PSI =0.25·D+0.20·I+0.15·U+0.15·A+0.15·S+0.10·R
- D
- Durable domestic capacity
- I
- Import exposure
- U
- Upstream dependence
- A
- Access and affordability
- S
- Shock endurance
- R
- Resource headroom
Every score is also recomputed under equal weighting of the six pillars as a robustness check. See the annex for what moves.
The overall score is the weighted mean of the six pillars, shown to one decimal place and rounded down, so no score is lifted into a higher tier by rounding. Scores a few points apart should be read as similar.
Weights reflect how central and how certain each pillar's claim is, and were fixed before any entity was scored.
| Pillar | Weight | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Durable domestic capacity | 25% | The anchor of the definition: produce at home, sustainably. |
| Import exposure | 20% | The direct measure of dependence on suppliers, ports and chokepoints. |
| Upstream dependence | 15% | The same dependence one step removed. |
| Access and affordability | 15% | The outcome check, weighted so the index measures sovereignty rather than becoming a general food-security index. |
| Shock endurance | 15% | "Even through disruption" is in the definition verbatim. |
| Resource headroom | 10% | A projection about expansion rather than a measurement of the present, and the least certain pillar. |
Structure carries 60 per cent (capacity, imports, upstream), performance 30 per cent (access, endurance) and potential 10 per cent (headroom).
Tiers
Tier thresholds are inclusive at the lower bound and exclusive at the upper: an overall of exactly 65.0 is Resilient, and an overall of exactly 40.0 is Dependent.
| Tier | Score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereign | 80 to 100 | Can meet protein needs domestically or through robustly diversified supply, sustainably and affordably, through extended disruption |
| Resilient | 65 to 80 | Strong capacity or well-diversified supply with manageable dependencies |
| Exposed | 50 to 65 | Material dependencies on concentrated suppliers, chokepoints or imported inputs |
| Dependent | 40 to 50 | Structural reliance on imports or imported inputs with limited substitution capacity |
| Critically exposed | 0 to 40 | Severe concentration of supply through few suppliers or chokepoints, little endurance or affordability, or an eroding resource base |
Sourcing standard
Every quantitative claim in an assessment carries a numbered citation to a primary or authoritative secondary source, with its data year stated. Admissible sources are FAO, UN Comtrade, USDA, World Bank, national statistics offices, peer-reviewed literature, and named quality journalism for events.
Annex
Equal weighting
Every score is recomputed under equal weighting, to show how much of the result the published weights are responsible for. The answer is very little.
One entity changes tier. Ukraine (65.3, Resilient) falls to 63.5, into Exposed, losing the tier to war-damaged access at 50 and upstream dependence at 48. Every other entity holds its tier.
The closest of the rest are Southeast Asia, Ethiopia and South Asia. Southeast Asia is weighted at 49.9 and reads 49.3 under equal weighting, Dependent on both. Ethiopia is weighted at 42.0 and reads 40.0, the Dependent lower bound, so it holds the tier. South Asia is weighted at 42.5 and reads 40.3.
Swipe to view the whole chart.
Anchor integrity
The access pillar is anchored on the FAO and World Bank series on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet.
The anchor is set aside where that series:
- is suppressed
- disagrees between its prevalence and headcount releases
- rests on income data that cannot describe the population scored
The pillar is then scored on measured evidence, with the source of every input stated. No figure is interpolated.
Price transmission profile
Food inflation alone cannot show whether a price rise came from world markets, a falling currency or a failed harvest. Each assessment therefore carries a price transmission profile, building on ODI's work on how world prices reach local markets (Wiggins and Keats, 2013).
The profile places each economy in one of four classes:
- insulated by policy
- open and transmitting
- insulated by distance
- buffered by processing and retail margins
It also records five measures:
- pass-through from world to local prices
- the exchange rate's part in the latest price spike
- whether prices fell back after world prices did
- the swing in the main staple's price within a year
- the price of a protein basket in hours of work
The profile is unscored in 2026 and will be scored from 2027.
Crisis purchasing power
The endurance pillar scores the capacity to keep buying through a crisis. It makes up 20 per cent of the pillar's quantitative score, on one scale for all entities:
- foreign-exchange reserves in months of import cover, from 5 points at zero to 97 at two years or more
- credits for large sovereign wealth funds, credit-market access, and social protection that can scale in a crisis
Issuers of freely convertible currencies widely held abroad (the United States, the euro area, Japan and the United Kingdom) carry a floor of 60, because they face no hard-currency limit on paying for imports.
Supply buffer
The shock endurance pillar credits protein supply above requirement as a buffer, at 20 per cent of the pillar's quantitative score. Supply is FAO food balance sheet protein in grams per person per day, gross of food lost between farm and plate. The requirement is 58 g a day, the safe intake of 0.83 g per kilogram of body weight set by WHO, FAO and UNU in 2007 and adopted by EFSA in 2012 (EFSA, 2012).
The buffer is the share of supply that could be lost with people still at requirement, one minus 58 divided by supply, scored on a fixed scale:
| Share that could be lost | Supply | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 0 or less | 58 g or less | 25 |
| 0.15 | 68 g | 45 |
| 0.30 | 83 g | 65 |
| 0.45 | 105 g | 85 |
| 0.55 or more | 129 g or more | 95 |
Regions and blocs are scored member by member, each on its own supply, and the result is the population-weighted average.
The buffer shows what affordability alone does not. Thailand and Japan can afford their protein but hold little margin above requirement, while Ethiopia and Indonesia hold a margin their people cannot afford to buy.
At a 65 g reference in place of 58 g, Ukraine falls from 65.3 to 64.8, into Exposed, and no other tier changes. Removing the buffer altogether lowers the mean overall score by 0.46 of a point and changes three tiers: Ukraine falls to Exposed, and Central America and the Caribbean and Taiwan to Critically exposed.
The judgement layer
The 2026 edition carries 258 adjustments: 110 negative, 91 positive and 57 at zero. None reaches the 15-point bound.
Editions
The index is published every year, and PSI 2026 is the first edition. Any change to the method is set out with the next edition, so readers can tell a real change in a country's position from a change in how it is measured.
Publication
Published by Full Circle Biotech. Authors: Felix Collins and Alex Aldridge.
The scores are downloadable as CSV or JSON, licensed CC BY 4.0. Cite this edition as: Full Circle Biotech (2026). The Protein Sovereignty Index 2026. proteinsovereigntyindex.com