Hunger is a national security concern

During the height of the pandemic last year, I wrote an essay in this column arguing that hunger, if not properly addressed, would become a major national security threat. The opinion piece was triggered by the survey result then of the Social Weather Station (SWS) released in September 2019 showing the rising incidence of hunger among Filipinos. SWS reported that 30.7 percent of the respondents, or equivalent to 7.6 million Filipino families, interviewed admitted that they “went hungry.” To stress the gravity of the situation, the report also noted that its September 2019 finding had a difference of 10 percentage points from the July SWS survey, which registered at 20.9 percent and higher than the previous high of 23.8 percent in March of 2020. It should be pointed out that the SWS survey is a perception survey of the respondents but it is a clear indication that things on the ground are not going on well.

This finding was validated by the Department of Science and Technology’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute recent survey showing that hunger has been experienced by more than 50 percent of Filipinos. In other words, the situation has worsened, which can be attributed to the continuing ravages brought by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic to our economy.