Viewpoint
By Juan
L. Mercado
Walang
tutong sa taong nagugutom, a Filipino proverb says. “There’s no
burnt rice to a hungry person.”
Hunger
anchors World Food Day (WFD), Oct. 16. The Philippines and FAO (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 that
“[w]ithin 10 years, no child would go to bed hungry.” Today, one
out of every eight—12 percent of the world’s population—is food
short.
Political
static drowns WFD’s message here. The European Union, the United
Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly the
Organization of the Islamic Conference) welcomed the agreement on the
framework for peace forged by government and the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front “to turn swords into ploughshares.” But the
aging Moro National Liberation Front and communist commissars
threaten mayhem. So do rebels like Umra 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 Stations’ 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 Metro Manila, overall hunger rose to 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 farmlands. 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 that prices bolted
by a further 1.4 percent in September. “That left more people
hungry than at any time in history…. An era of filled granaries had
come to an end.”
The
rich rearranged their menus. But the poor spend 50-70 percent of
skimpy incomes on food. They’ve long consumed the last scrap of
tutong. They now skip meals.
In
India, 24 percent of families 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, Burundi, Madagascar,
Niger, Djibouti 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, and Libya, even Sweden, bought or
leased land where they can grow food for themselves—in other
countries.
Over
30 million hectares have now been contracted for. 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.
“Mine eyes glaze over.” We’re blind to the pain. We do not see
Lazarus at the gate.
President
Aquino’s Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program eased some of
hunger’s raw pain. CCT provides families with monthly grants
of P1,400—provided they keep children in school, and have them
vaccinated and enrolled in health programs. There are 3.08 million
household-beneficiaries.
World
Bank, the 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 confuses the problem of hunger
with that of its cause: social injustice,” the late National
Scientist Dioscoro Umali wrote. “They insist our flawed strategies
did not stem from poor judgment. At rock bottom, it was a simple case
of old-fashioned greed. Avarice rationalized the betrayal of the
weak.”
“I
pray this assessment is wrong,” he added. “(Otherwise) we will
have much to answer for from those whose lives and hopes were
blighted by hunger.”
No comments:
Post a Comment