Walang tutong sa taong nagugtom, a Filipino proverb says. “There’s no burnt rice to a hungry person.”
Hunger anchors World Food Day (WFD) marked Oct. 16. The Philippines and Food and Agriculture Organization member-countries established WFD in 1979. Today, 150 countries observe WFD.
WFD came after Henry Kissinger told the 1974 World Food Conference: “Within 10 years, no child would go to bed hungry.” Today, one out of every eight—12 percent of the world’s population—are food short.
Political static drowns WFD’s message here. The European Union, United Nations to Organization of the Islamic Conference welcomed the agreement by the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front “to turn swords into ploughshares.” But aging Moro National Liberation Front and communist commissars threaten mayhem. So do rebels like Umbra Kato and gang.
Sen. Ralph Recto gutted a P60-billion “sin tax” proposal to a pittance of P15 billion. He now twists in a whirlwind of criticism. Did coddled tobacco firms, in a hush-hush meeting, provide Recto’s mask of injured innocence?
Social Weather Station’s October report says 4.3 million households were hard put to get even burnt rice. Over the past three months, 21 percent “experienced involuntary hunger, at least once.”
“Moderate hunger”—“having nothing to eat only once or a few times—surged. In crammed in Metro Manila, overall hunger rose 10 percent. It inched up in Mindanao. Decades of conflict castrated its potential as the nation’s breadbasket.
Weather pattern distortions, continued post harvest losses and growing populations interlocked with shrinking farm lands. These morphed into the “new geopolitics of food scarcity,” Earth Policy Institute’s Lester Brown notes.
Between 2007 and 2008, grain prices doubled. FAO reported prices bolted by a further 1.4 percent in September. “That left more people hungry than any time in history… An era of filled granaries had come to an end.”
The rich rearranged their menus. But the poor spend 50 to 70 percent of skimpy incomes on food. They’ve long consumed the last scrap of tutong. They skip meals.
In India, 24 percent of families now go through foodless days, a “Save the Children” survey found. More than half the people of Haiti are undernourished. The Global Hunger Index of 2012 identifies 20 countries saddled by “alarming” levels of hunger, These include East Timor, Bangladesh, Eritrea and Burundi to Madagascar, Niger, Dijibouti and Nepal.
World food reserves dwindled from 107 days of consumption to only 74 days in 2008. This triggered a “land rush.” Some Gulf states, China, South Korea, Libya, even Sweden, bought or leased land where they can grow food for themselves.
Over 30 million hectares have now been contracted. International Food Policy Research Institute estimates nearly $20 to $30 billion a year is spent by better-off countries on land. Most are in Africa.
Saudi Arabia, whose aquifers ran dry last year, bought half a million hectares in Tanzania. South Korea signed a 99-year lease for 1.3 million hectares of agricultural land in Madagascar.
Other major destinations for land hunters are Ethiopia and the two Sudans. Millions in these countries are sustained with UN World Food Programme donations.
Here, 21 out of every 100 infants have low weight at birth. Wasting and stunting (32 percent) result when kids are nursed by wizened, chronically malnourished mothers. Out of every 1,000 births here, 29 never make it to age 5.
Today, the country is almost on par with the Dominican Republic in infant mortality rates. It lags behind Malaysia’s 6. In an overall ranking of 193 countries, we’re wedged at slot 80.
Worse, these dry-as-sawdust statistics infect many of us with Mego syndrome (My eyes glaze over). We’re blind to the pain. We do not see Lazarus at the gate.
President Benigno Aquino III’s Conditional Cash Transfer program eased some of hunger’s raw pain. CCT provides families monthly grants of P1,400—provided they keep children in school, have them vaccinated and enroll in health programs. There are 3.08 million household-beneficiaries.
The World Bank, Australian Agency for International Development and Asian Development Bank are providing additional support until 2015. That’s when this program phases out.
Will we see then the frail men and women who till slivers of land or fish depleted waters for what they are? Only they can provide a permanent solution to hunger.
Ironically, they’re locked into subsistence treadmills by elite political dynasties. They’re denied access to tools for production, but above all, a just share from their work. As a result, their lives are truncated by disease, lack of schooling and limited hope. It is obscene that those who produce food are often the ones who go hungry.
“Critics say our crafting of policies often confused the problem of hunger with that of it’s cause: social injustice,” the late National Scientist Dioscoro Umali wrote. “They insist our flawed strategies did not stem from poor judgement. At rock bottom, it was a simple case of old-fashioned greed. Avarice rationalized betrayal of the weak.”
“I pray this assessment is wrong,” the Dean added. “(Otherwise) we will have much to answer for from those whose lives and hopes were blighted by hunger.”