Premature chick tally
FILIPINOS LIVE in a sun-drenched belt of land “bracketed by the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.” This is a providential endowment. Harnessed, it would make this country a food granary, a Food and Agriculture Organization director general once said at UP Los Baños.
Instead, hunger gripped 3.4 million Filipino families in the last quarter of 2010, a Social Weather Stations survey found. President Benigno Aquino III took over then from a graft-sapped regime.
Those experiencing severe hunger crested at more than 900,000 families. Hunger rose in all areas, except in the Visayas. Moderate hunger was up in all geographical areas, although Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo boasted that her “legacy” was “34 quarters of uninterrupted economic growth.”
The 7th National Nutrition Survey also found that malnutrition kept floodgates ajar to TB, blindness due to Vitamin A deficiency and energy-sapping anemia. Out of every hundred pre-schoolers, 26 were underweight. More kids below 5 years are emaciated, shorter, skinnier, the Food and Nutrition Research Institute found.
“Hunger by installment is not the stuff of headlines,” noted Viewpoint. (Inquirer, 11/6/09) “Headlines and the evening news focus on current scandals.”
The Sandiganbayan stamped a seal of Good Housekeeping on the former AFP comptroller’s plea bargain, as prosecutors chortled. Carlos Garcia bagged a lower penalty and keeps the bulk of the loot. Former Sen. Jovito Salonga, Rep. Erin Tañada and others asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the decision that let tycoon Eduardo Cojuangco pocket coco levy benefits but overlooked small farmers who had paid the levy.
Reporting significance is essential, if the country is to break free of semi-paralysis from sleaze. The Philippines limped in, at 85th out of 139 countries, ranked by the latest World Competitiveness Report.
Thus, new reports on unmilled rice harvests bolting by more than a tenth in the first quarter of 2011 should be scrutinized. A basic staple, rice is also politically charged. In 2010, drought-seared Philippines held the uncoveted title of the world’s biggest rice importer.
“The good 2011 summer harvest is more than a return to normalcy,” Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala gushed to Reuters. “It’s a sign the Philippines is well on its way to rice self-sufficiency by 2013.”
Did this stem from more fertilizers, new seeds and better management on expanded areas? Or is that just buena mano for the new Aquino administration? We had breathing spells between El Niño and La Niña episodes. We cross our fingers that Alcala is not counting chicks before the eggs are hatched.
Improvements in harvest of rice, corn and coconuts can mask ravages of lethal and difficult-to-reverse land degradation. Soil erosion affects more than 54 percent of arable land.
Central Visayas once contained the highest concentration of coral reef fishes in the world. Not anymore. Overfishing and habitat degradation savaged species richness, scientists like Magsaysay Awardee Angel Alcala points out.
That provides context to evaluate the UN Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2011 forecast: the Philippines may sustain post-crisis economic growth, but growth will be “without development.”
“It could well increase poverty,” partly due to a large expanding population, frets UN Development Program’s Renaud Meyer. The “fairly stable growth” of the Philippine economy in the past 10 years has not made a significant dent on poverty. Nor has it been inclusive.
“At worst, it is growth that increases poverty, benefiting few industries, few regions and few sectors of society,” he added. “Poverty may be explained in part by population growth.”
When Mr.Aquino became President, there were more than 92 million of us Filipinos. The pre-World War II census counted 19 million plus. Momentum of population growth, however, ignores presidents, legislators, even bishops. Thus, when Mr. Aquino leaves Malacañang in 2016, there will probably be 101.6 million of us, probably more.
“Large numbers start dying after they are born,” says the report, “Winning the Numbers, Losing the War.” Scrawny stunted kids are “comparable to the prevalence of underweight children under 5 years of age in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Over 28 million scrounge below the poverty line.
Most Asian countries completed their “demographic transitions.” They have shifted from high fertility and high mortality to one of low fertility and low mortality. We haven’t gotten off the starting block. If we had, the ranks of indigents would have been whittled by about 3.6 million, economists Arsenio Balisacan, Dennis Mapa and Jose Corpuz estimate from a comparison of 80 countries.
The Aquino administration and Catholic Church are deadlocked over the reproductive health bill. That stalemate does not occur in a vacuum. Over half a million kids are aborted here as families lack information or access to family planning.
World population won’t plateau at a fraction above nine billion in the middle of this century, as earlier predicted. It may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, says a new UN population division report.
Will enough food and water be available then, let alone schools or clinics? Will China’s aging population be offset by the Middle East surge in numbers? The worldwide headcount has implications beyond fire and brimstone threat leveled at those who back the RH bill here.
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