Much to do about food

Over 50 years ago, two programs were started in the Philippines by the administration of President Marcos’ father. There was the Masagana 99 in 1973, an agricultural program aimed at solving the country’s then-worsening rice shortage, and the Nutribun school feeding effort in 1971 to combat child malnutrition as part of the United States Agency for International Development Food for Peace Program.

Fast forward to today, we are now a top importer of rice as we feed 119.1 million Filipinos compared to only 38.4 million in 1971 and we are faced with what economist Ciel Habito calls a ticking demographic timebomb due to a “stunting problem, wherein one in every three Filipino children 5 years old and below is stunted due to chronic malnutrition.”

For as long as I can remember in my 37 years work career that allowed me to join various fora on what ails the country and what can be done, rice sufficiency and hunger and malnutrition were always key priorities—problems that needed urgent, multisector and multiagency coordinated action now to prevent looming disaster. The scale of the problems and the need to bring together many different moving parts to address the problem brought about a now common call for an all-of-nation approach.

I heard this again at last Monday’s 2024 Phinma policy forum on food security organized by Phinma and its construction materials group together with the Stratbase ADR Institute and Makati Business Club (MBC). As presentations were made on how to achieve food security and advance investments for agricultural sustainability, the need for collaboration and coordination across sectors and agencies was an oft-repeated call, and yes, an all-of-nation approach was brought up in the ensuing exchange of insights among invited experts. This approach is actually not a Philippine reality invention. When I first heard “all-of-nation,” I was executive director of MBC and best practices of neighbors in Asia were being cited like Taiwan and South Korea.

All-of-nation assumes that there will be dialogue that translates into concrete and collaborative action plans and strategies. It also requires monitoring of outputs and outcomes given clear timelines and it is founded on a shared belief that if we do not come together, the nation will remain gasping for breath in the last place in the global competitiveness race. Our people will remain poor, our children stunted and illiterate, and our demographic dividend, a demographic catastrophe.

What I do not and what I refuse to understand is why our leaders in both the public and private sectors do not see this as urgent enough to make the real dialogue happen. Once upon a time, we tried to bring just one part of the business sector together to agree to pool our resources on one key lever to address our education crisis. Then, it was concluded to be teacher quality. Were we able to bring all corporate social responsibility funds estimated at P2 billion of all companies doing education projects together? No. Everyone else thought that their education project was superior. Hard to blame them but tough on the continuing crisis.

This week’s policy forum like many other continuing dialogues and initiatives tried to focus on a segment of the problem—addressing food waste and food costs through investments in agriculture. This aligns with the Department of Agriculture’s thrust to develop and improve post-harvest systems and infrastructure. The need for solar-powered cold storage facilities across the country was highlighted as one key intervention. With this one very specific intervention arose considerations and concerns that will likely cut across all possible interventions: who finances, who identifies the need, who maintains, and how do small farmers use and get their produce to these facilities?

Habito has many times brought up the question of devolving agriculture to the local governments so that they can help answer most of these questions. When their capacity and capability are cited as the stumbling block, Habito often challenges national government agencies to take up their role of capacity building. I would hasten to add, and work with nongovernment and community organizations. Oxfam Pilipinas for example has always advocated for strategic partnership models that bring various stakeholders and their resources together to achieve better outcomes including scale.

And where is the private sector in all these? At the very minimum, it must be told what investments are needed and where and the private sector must, in turn, offer possible models for that investment to work that government on national and local levels, as well as people’s organizations, can look into as viable options to address once and for all an ages-old gap.

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Peter Angelo V. Perfecto, a former executive director of MBC, works with the Phinma group and chairs Oxfam Pilipinas.

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