THE Philippines ranked 72nd out of 109 countries in the recent Global Food Security Index by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), which aimed to determine the most and least vulnerable nations to food instability.
With a score of 49.4 out of 100 points, the Philippines was placed under the “moderate environment” group. This was hardly a significant improvement from the 49.5 that the country recorded last year, 49.1 in 2013, and 48.8 in 2012.
The EIU ranked countries according to four major indicators, namely food affordability, availability, and quality and safety, where the Philippines ranked 73rd, 66th, and 68th, respectively.
Citing the 1996 World Food Summit, EIU defined food security as “the state in which people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life.”
Aside from the ability of consumers to purchase food, affordability also refers to vulnerability to price shocks as well as the presence of policies to aid consumers in the occurrence of these shocks.
Availability, meanwhile, “measured sufficiency of the national food supply, the risk of supply disruption, and national capacity to disseminate food and research efforts to expand agricultural output.”
EIU defines quality and safety as the “nutritional quality of average diets.”
It cited volatility of agricultural production, agricultural import tariffs, urban absorption capacity, and food safety as some of the strengths of the Philippines after it scored above 75.0 in the said indicators.
The country’s weaknesses included public expenditure on agricultural research and development, corruption, gross domestic product per capita and protein quality.
The United States topped the 2015 index with a score of 89.0.
Singapore, Ireland, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Australia and France also cracked the top 10 of the “best environment” group.
Burundi landed on the bottom of the list with a score of 25.1. Other countries belonging to the “needs improvement” bracket are Chad, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Congo, Haiti, Mozambique, Zambia, Togo and Niger.
Overall, EIU said food security improved in almost all regions of the world, with the Middle East, North Africa and Asia Pacific recording the highest leaps.