AN ESTIMATED 3.4 million families (13.6%) experienced involuntary hunger – hunger due to lack of food to eat – at least once in the past three months prior to June, in the national Social Weather Survey of June 23-26, 2021.
The June 2021 Hunger rate is 3.2 points below the 16.8% (estimated 4.2 million families) in May 2021. There’s improvement for sure. But while this is lower, it still shows that many Filipinos experience hunger.
There are several possible reasons for the hunger among Filipinos. Many have been economically displaced by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Food production may not be keeping up with our growing population. There simply is not enough food. By the time the food produced at the farm level gets to the consumers, food prices are too high. Many cannot buy at these high retail prices. Some cannot purchase the food they need because they have too little income or what income they have for food has largely been eaten up by inflation.
What is clear, though, is that food production did not keep up with the growing population. In 1990 to 1999 for example, the Philippine population grew at 2.3 percent while agriculture growth averaged only 2.1 percent. In other words, food production didn’t keep up with the growing population. The agricultural growth rates increased to 3.6 percent in 2000, 3.9 in both 2001 and 2002 (a mild El Niño year), 3.7 percent in 2003, and 3.8 in 2004 to 2006. These rates were all higher than the 2.3 population growth rate then. Now the country has over a hundred million population but our agriculture sector has not been just as productive. No pun intended. Why, we even import rice!
While we acknowledge that the government is doing what it can to promote and improve the agricultural sector, there are still millions of Filipinos experiencing hunger. This only shows that hunger is not determined by food production alone. Although the prices of food, like vegetables, are very low and affordable in the farmgate, these must be transported to the market. Before it reached the retail level, the prices have jacked up to as much as 40 to 80 percent. Why is that?
The government should examine what happens from the time food is actually produced at the farmgate to the time it reaches the consumers in the retail market.
Those in the retail level, which is the consumers, are the most affected. They are the people in the survey who said they experience involuntary hunger.
