Into the Pits of Hunger
Despite the Philippines’ fertile land, it remains the most food insecure among countries in Southeast Asia, recording 51 million Filipinos who are moderately and severely food insecure. The agriculture sector is left to rot, abandoned by a government that’s more concerned with feeding delusions of progress than feeding its people. A full-blown food crisis looms, but Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration remains deafeningly silent, paralyzed into inaction.
Faux numbers and outlandish empiricism are leading the government astray in addressing the food and economic crisis.
Earlier this month, the Philippine government boasted that the country “beat inflation” after its rates hit the lowest since the pandemic. Consumer Price Index or the price consumers pay on basic commodities has reportedly slowed down by 1.9 percent year-on-year levels. But diving deeper, these are but a veil to the incompetencies of the government in steadfastly addressing the issue.
Think tank IBON Foundation unraveled the truth — government efforts did not achieve this feat, rather it is the vulnerability of the Philippines’ import dependence, along with falling global oil prices and the weakening dollar. If any indication, it only underscores the Philippines’ vulnerability to the highly volatile global market — a defect of neoliberal policies and a consequence of being economically leashed by imperialist countries.
Missing the mark of the demanded P150 wage hike, the Department of Labor and Employment defended the meager P35 increase last July, claiming it maintains the minimum wage “above the regional poverty threshold for a family of five.” Reality is that across all regions, the minimum wage falls 63.1% short of the average family living wage, which IBON approximates to be P1,213 for a family of five. The increase is a mere drop in a bucket at best and a disgrace to workers at worst.
In August, NEDA Secretary Arsenio Basilacan brandished their yardstick — declaring P64 sufficient to be able to eat three meals a day and P9,581 a month to feed a family of five. But, none of these numbers are close to the tragic reality of the marginalized crushed by the poverty line.
The rising cost of commodities, despite stagnating wages, continues to push low-income families deeper into poverty. Reports from IBON Foundation revealed that while nominal wages soared by over a hundred since 2021, this increase pales in comparison to the sharp rise in essential goods. Prices have gone from P38 per kilogram in 2021 to P46 this year, while potatoes surged from P58 to P98.
This forces families to turn to cheaper alternatives, including ultra-processed foods, which provide inadequate nutrition and increase the risk of undernutrition and non-communicable diseases. This case was no different during the 2008 global economic crisis under the Arroyo administration, where, alarmingly, 46 percent of families consider themselves “food-poor,” meaning they are unable to afford adequate nutrition.
The precarious state of food security due to soaring prices of goods must be addressed from its roots. Yet, the agriculture sector remains unsupported and lagging despite the Philippines being an agricultural country. Development has generally receded from the 2000s to 2010s, as the country became more dependent on services as its economic driver. Dependency on services leaves us bound to the ills brought about by the lack of efforts to strengthen local production; hence, it is no surprise that the Philippines has an import-dependent, export-oriented economy, furthering food insecurity.
Such stagnation is caused by the long-standing pests of the land, such as outdated and inaccessible modern agricultural technology, lack of financial support, and the ever-elusive genuine agrarian reform due to the land monopoly of the richest few. For centuries, the biggest irony has remained — the country’s producers grapple with poverty inside the feudal and backward agricultural system.
The administration needs to recognize that there is a food crisis and their deficient and toothless schemes have drowned peasants and ordinary Filipinos into the pits of hunger. Such a crisis highlights the need for a wage that could match food prices, a genuine agrarian reform that extends adequate support for the farmers’ needed resources, and a national industry that prioritizes farmers’ interests over big corporations and foreign companies.
