“The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.” – Frances Moore Lappe
In recent years the world is a very different when it committed to the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. This is the millennium development goal where everyone was optimistic employing transformative approaches where progress could be accelerated, at scale, to put us on track to achieve the goal. Or, is this doomed to fail?
WIDESPREAD INACCESSIBILITY
According to World Bank, the number of people in the world affected by hunger was between more than 700 and 800 million people in 2020 and this was during a pandemic. After remaining virtually unchanged from 2014 to 2019 the prevalence of undernourishment climbed to almost 10 percent in 2020, from 8.4 percent in 2019.
Expectedly by hemispheric divide South Asia comes in second after Sub-Saharan Africa. The Philippines belongs to the former. This simply means that hunger and poverty is in-accessibility to food. In South East Asia, about 40 percent of its staple (rice) is exported to Europe. In Indonesia alone almost 20 percent of its agricultural land is planted to palm oil and about 10-15 percent is devoted to coffee. These products are profit-oriented production and not to produce food to address hunger. Farmers are considered mere labor.
In the Philippines, about 10-15 percent of agricultural area produces banana. By percentage of its agricultural land the same can be said to coconut and sugarcane. An irony that those who produce these major products can only be afforded with wages hardly enough sustain an average family with 5 members.
The World Bank report added, that, “the poverty estimates are for 86 countries, representing about 90 percent of the population of developing countries.”
WORSENING GLOBAL HUNGER
The estimates do not include the countries of Indochina or of the former Soviet Union. The poverty line is $31.23 per person per month at 1985 prices.
Apparently the incidence of poverty declined in the two decades to the mid-1980s, but no significant progress has been made since then and the absolute numbers of the poor increased (Lipton and Ravallion, 1993). The highest incidence of poverty is encountered in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 50 percent of the population is estimated to be below the poverty line, with the former accounting for the bulk of the world’s poor because of its large population.
PHENOMENAL UNAFFORDABILITY
In 2020, 42 percent of people globally – around 3.1 billion people – were unable to afford a healthy diet. This was an increase from the 40.9 percent and 41.5 percent of people across the world without access to a healthy diet.
Domestically, the Food and Agriculture Office of the UN found that from 2019 to 2021, 5.3 million Filipinos were severely food insecure, while 48 million more experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. The FAO report also noted that between 2019 and 2021, 5.7 million Filipinos were undernourished. Moreover, the World Food Programme survey in October last year show that one out of ten households in the Philippines is food insecure. The poorest regions have been more affected by food insecurity (BARMM and Regions VIII and XII).
IRONY OF TRUTH
Strikingly, these are households that rely on agricultural livelihoods are also the ones who suffer from food insecurity. About a quarter of agricultural households are food insecure, compared to only 9 percent for non-agricultural households. As more agricultural households reported reduced incomes, they are more likely to resort to coping strategies to address food insecurity such borrowing money to buy food. More alarming four out of ten households are resort to use of crisis and emergency coping strategies.
In Western Visayas, poverty incidence is at 27 percent out of its almost 8 million population. Obviously, Negros is the largest province in the region. This is according to the PSA 2020 data.
REITERATION OF CALL
Agricultural modernization and productivity is meaningless if the pressing problem of hunger and poverty is not addressed. As the marginalized farmers ironically declare, “we, the ones who produce food are the ones who suffer the most from hunger”.
It is important that major the players – the marginalized farmers and ARB’s who dwell all their life in agriculture are first, recognized and then capacitated and eventually have access and full control of their own produce. Land ownership, skills and technology transfer and market access must be in order.*
