Reality bites

When President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared that no Filipino should go hungry, he described it as his dream, promising that “wala nang gutom” would be achieved under his administration.

But after credible polling firms released findings on families that experienced hunger in the previous three months, the gap between that aspiration and the figures has become difficult to ignore.

One survey found that 22.6 percent of households, or more than one in five, had experienced hunger at least once during the preceding three months.

Of these, 16.2 percent reported moderate hunger, meaning they experienced it once or a few times, while 6.4 percent suffered severe hunger, meaning going without food had become frequent or constant. Over the years and across administrations, hunger rose and fell with food prices, the strength of the job market and the fury of the weather.

It stayed mostly between 10 and 25 percent for long stretches, and it fell to near 10 percent in the years just before the pandemic. It rose sharply only once, to about 31 percent in September 2020, when lockdowns closed markets and cut wages.

That spike was brief because it stemmed from an emergency that eventually ended. By the time Marcos took office in mid-2022, the figure had settled back to around 10 to 12 percent.

What followed is dismal. The chart shows hunger climbing after 2022 to a high of about 27 percent, and then staying near 22 percent through the latest survey. A survey firm calls it a “sustained” crisis, but the pandemic spike was sharp and short, while the current hardship has lasted long without any lockdown to blame.

The hunger spell is the worst in at least three decades, and the skewed policies behind the “no hunger” promise explain part of the gap.

Marcos served as his own agriculture secretary until November 2024, meaning rice, the food that decides whether a low-income family eats, was his direct responsibility.

Here, then, lies the conflict between the statement and the data. The President’s words describe a country where no one goes without a meal, whereas the survey describes a country where more than one in five households said they did, and where one in sixteen said it happened often or always.

The difficulty for the Palace is not that the President articulated a dream, for every leader is expected to aspire to a better nation, but that he set a standard by which the public now measures his administration.

Two years after Marcos declared that no Filipino should go hungry, the proportion of families experiencing hunger has nearly doubled from its level when he took office.

Until that trend bends downward and stays there, the words “wala nang gutom” will continue to be measured against the 22.6-percent poverty incidence.

The public will ultimately decide which better reflects the nation’s reality — the President’s promise or the figures confronting ordinary Filipinos — and what steps are necessary to lift the curse of the rumbling stomach.