NGEC 3: REFLECTION PAPER

As a responsible citizen of the Philippines, how are you going to ensure the food
security of the country, and what solution/s that you are going to develop?

Food security is a basic human right. In fact, having access to a sufficient amount
of healthy food may be considered the most fundamental of all human rights. Food
security is very important to ensure that everyone has enough to eat and families can
build their communities without worrying about securing their live. However, for
hundreds of millions of people, this right is not being met, usually for reasons entirely
out of their control. To meet global needs, food production must be doubled in the next
years in order to solve many issues such as: starvation, malnutrition and associated
health.
In the Philippines, food security is also a major problem in the society these days
since there are data or statistics that showed that almost 60 million Filipinos are
suffering from moderate up to server lack of consistent access to food. It was also
agreed by the Social Weather Station (SWS) released in September 2019 that showed
the rising incidence of hunger among Filipinos wherein 30.7 percent of the respondents,
or equivalent to 7.6 million Filipino families, interviewed admitted that they “went
hungry.” Although geographically, the Philippines is full of fertile lands ready to be
cultivated for agriculture, there are still lot of factors that affects the food availability in
the Philippines. One is the prevalence of natural calamities which contribute to food
insecurity in the Philippines, basically the country is susceptible to typhoons and
droughts, that causes devastating effects mainly to the farmer’s crop. Moreover, lack of
adequate infrastructure has posed an unnecessary and formidable challenge to
farmers. The lack of accessible roads that link farms to retailers. The notable absence
of farm-to-market roads (FMRs), which are national roads that connect farms and
coastal areas to main highways, renders farmers unable to transport their goods.
Another thing that contributes to food insecurity in the Philippines is the
unemployment rate and poverty since there are high food prices in the region, only
those with adequate income will be able to purchase nutritious food, while others with
lesser incomes will have to make do with less expensive alternatives or possibly nothing
at all. Due to these things hunger become widespread, especially in rural areas, the
prolonged or recurring lockdowns has worsened the food insecurity throughout the
country.
With these things being said, I cannot deny that a lot of things must be
addressed, the problems that the Philippines are facing are all interconnected and
causing the status of the country the fall off. These problems both internally and
externally affects the food security in the Philippines and due to that, it significantly
affects the people. Although, there are booming community pantries that emerged due
to the pandemic to aid the needy in the country, but still, it is not quite enough to solve
the food security in the Philippines.
The thing that I know that I can help with the problem in the food security in our
country is just by simply not wasting the food that is being served to me. I should be
grateful with this since I know that I am one of those folks that can eat more than thrice
a meal in a day. Moreover, donating or volunteering in the LGU’s for their drives to aid
our fellow citizen will also contribute to the food security in our country. Contributing also
in our local community pantries just by donating some extra money or food will also help
my fellow citizen to fight hunger in these challenging times. And lastly, choosing a wise
leader for our country will generally contribute to fight the problem in food security in the
Philippines.