The geopolitics of food security: Can BRICS orchestrate a new agenda with ASEAN countries?

Highlights

• BRICS expansion and the BRICS Grain Exchange initiative are increasingly relevant to global food markets and security.
• Wheat, maize, and rice trade shows exporter–importer complementarities in the expanded BRICS, but also concentration risks.
• Exchange participants' food security gains depend on payment cooperation and orchestrating New Development Bank financing.
• Through BRICS–ASEAN cooperation, the Exchange could link to regional reserves and develop export-restriction safeguards.
• BRICS orchestration capacity tests whether and how informal groups can advance global food security.

Abstract

The BRICS group of new powers and emerging economies has developed food security as a key area of cooperation, and its members are now major actors in global grain markets. The group's 2024–2025 expansion has added new members and partners, including from Southeast Asia. This Perspective asks whether the enlarged group can use the BRICS Grain Exchange (Exchange) initiative to orchestrate a new food security agenda for its participants. Drawing on the Jameel Index for Food Trade and Vulnerability, we map how BRICS expansion reshapes intra-BRICS trade in wheat, maize and rice, and identify where the Exchange could reduce food insecurity. The BRICS group's role as an orchestrator of internal and external institutional linkages is key to realizing food security gains for prospective Exchange participants. We argue that closer collaboration with the New Development Bank and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations can advance this agenda.