Food insecurity on the table

In one more month, the government and the public will know how practical the pilot implementation of a food security measure called the "Walang Gutom 2027 Food Stamp Program" is.

Started in July and will end in December this year, the FSP is a national program to end involuntary hunger. It was launched in July in Tondo, Manila, one of the FSP's pilot areas, and initially covered 3,000 families earning less than P8000 a month. The program's five pilot sites include geographically isolated regions, urban poor settings, calamity-stricken areas, and rural poor areas in select cities and towns in the National Capital Region, Caraga and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

As envisioned, the FSP targeted the bottom one million households from Listahanan 3, the Philippines' national profile of people experiencing poverty, as defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority or PSA.

The FSP is not a novel idea. Rich and poor countries have been up for the zero hunger challenge by extending similar food security interventions for poor people in different ways. The food security situation worldwide is deteriorating, if not alarming. Results of the Global Food Security Index 2022 Report, the pre-eminent source of intelligence on the drivers of global food security, showed that last year's global food security continued to deteriorate after its peak in 2019. The GFSI measures food security in 113 countries based on affordability, availability, quality and safety, sustainability and adaptation.

With 783 million people going to bed on an empty stomach based on the World Food Programme report, the "Zero Hunger Challenge," an initiative first pitched before the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil in June 2012, encourages countries to ensure every human being has access to adequate nutrition and food sources to be resilient.

On the domestic front, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. said he was committed to achieving zero hunger by 2028 and ensuring everyone can have good nutrition and enjoy a "good, healthy and productive life."

The Second Quarter Social Weather Station survey conducted from 28 June to 1 July showed that 2.7 million Filipinos suffer from involuntary hunger, a condition of "being hungry and not having anything to eat" due to extreme poverty. The involuntary hunger rate hardly changed in the Visayas, with the hunger record decreasing by 5.4 points in Mindanao.

As the DSWD's flagship program, the FSP was to provide food equivalent assistance through an Electronic Benefits Transfer card loaded with P3,000 food credits. The beneficiaries could choose from a list of commodities approved by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, which helped craft the program that limits the "baskets of goods" from registered local retailers.

Like the conditional cash transfer "Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program" or 4Ps, wherein parents should ensure that their children are enrolled in school to continue reaping its benefits, the FSP assistance is also conditional and has a work component — those who signed up must seek employment to continue receiving it.

While the SWS classified involuntary hunger as moderate hunger or being involuntarily hungry "only once" or "a few times" in the last three months, and severe hunger, a condition that people go through "often" or "always," neither of these terms sounds any better. No person on earth should suffer from involuntary hunger as food is not a luxury, but a necessity of life. Giving back and helping those who are hungry validate our humanity.

Unlike more serious problems like illegal drugs and territorial disputes, involuntary hunger can be addressed quicker if we put our minds and pour more resources into solving it. Better-income private individuals and corporations could help the government defray the cost through donations or engaging in similar efforts as part of social responsibility.

As we step back and await the results of the FSP pilot test on people with no or low incomes, let's hope the program will provide desirable long-term effects on food security and strengthen it. The FSP should be the end of food insecurity on the table, not the beginning of its end.

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