Hold onto your Sushi Platter! Before we jump right into how the Philippines have been dealing with the security in the current age and time. We must first understand how food security is defined, understood, and measured.
Food security does sound a bit tangent as if some food needs protection, but it is way more different and complex. The food security means that every single person in a said country, have economic and physical access, or reach to a nutritional, culturally appropriate and safe food, all the time.
This also includes few other things in-line with the security of consumers, and that’s about the people, who also earn a decent wage living from the food cycle. This means the procuring, storing, transporting, retailing, farming, or even serving, all fall under this category.
So, food security all depends on safe and healthy, also a sustainable food system. But, how do the Philippines fall short and end up in the poverty line? Here we find out:
The Philippines has the 36th strongest world economy. With a population of 109 million, it is a stagnant economy, but with a gradual increase in its economic growth. It concluded it’s the year 2019 with a GDP of 6.0, a fall in 0.9% compared to last year, and it is projected to have a decrease in GDP further by 1.9% this year as of now.
The economy has a gradual variation in inflation and unemployment over the years, but they still are a detrimental factor towards the Philippine economy. As 1.7% in inflation rate does seem to be more and more taxing towards food security in the current age. The youth employment does a serious number, as there 31.5% of youth out of the system to bring food to the table.
As per the Global food security index, the challenges being faced by the Philippines are controllable measures, however, some challenges are harder to deal with than the others. If we understand the global food security index which considers some factors to the levels of a challenge if they happen to score below 25 marks.
So, this is what we got
· Corruption: biggest challenge yet, with ranking 0/100. The Philippines faces many political adversities over many years, thus affecting the standard of food and its prosperity as well.
· Expenditure on agriculture R&D: A mere drop-in rate of expenditure over the years have started to become immobile, so with a ranking 2.9/100
· GDP per capita: Phillippines is mostly rural and has an agriculture-based sector as a major source of GDP income in the past. The industrialization has moved the labor towards this industry, thus GDP slowly but gradually continues to improve. It has a ranking of 6.5/100
· Protein Quality: This is further related to how the protein intake is being processed and assured by the economy for its people. It has a ranking of 19.2/100
The ranking is measure with all the facts and figures compared to the ones of the global index.
GLOBAL SCALE, PHILIPPINES, AND THE HUNGER WAR
It may be surprising to see how the global economy and internal policies have an effect on Philippine’s economy over the years. The major concern comes to mind over the fall in global food security ranking over the years. As of now, the Philippines have a ranking of 64th in the world. The ranking does have a clear sign that shows how the food concern would be able to meet their due end, as the availability of food drops to 57.7 points, making a ranking of 65. Which is not alarming but quite concerning.
When talking about how the food would be managed by the economy to be more affordable towards consumers. Even the affordability index shows that it has 62 category ranking scores.
Diving into details. A normal person in the Philippines is at a disadvantage than the rest of the world by a negative 11%. A measure of its income shows US$ PPP is 8,924$, whereas for the world average index, its 23, 099$. This is a measure of individual income, hence the affordability.
For, change in average food cost, the Philippines ’ economy has shown a lesser change in the average food cost, having a change percentage of 1.9% positive, slightly less than the rate of the world’s average.
A measure of food how much food is available through the supply is sufficient. If we talk about the sufficiency of food in the Philippines, it falls just around the grip of the world’s average. The 2.1% negative growth insufficiency of food, along with withe fact that it has a score of 59% compared to the Global ranking.
The next factor, Agriculture infrastructure has very low in the Philippines’ economy. The global ranking of the Philippines in this regard is 32 out of 100. The growth rate of agriculture rating has been negative 16.7%, which shows poor growth in this. The agriculture infrastructure measures the ability of an economy to store and transport crops to market.
When it comes to quality and safety, the Philippines has a very good rating and standard in all of this. The global ranking in safety and quality is 80 out of 100. The government has a very strong commitment to the steady and strong increase in the nutritional standard of the food. The nutritional standard sets the score to 100 out of 100 in the global ranking. Which is 32% positive than the rest of the world economies.
