Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda on Thursday warned of a nutrition crisis in light of a recent survey showing some 100,000 families experienced hunger during the first quarter of 2022 amid increasing prices of basic commodities.
Salceda, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, was referring to results of the April 19-27 survey that showed 12.2 percent of the respondents said their families suffered lack of food supply over the past three months. The figure was 0.4 point above the 11.8 percent, or an estimated three million families that went hungry based on the survey conducted in December 2021, Salceda said.
“I fear that if we don’t find a way to get cheap, accessible sources of nutrition among the poor and among children, we will see a nutrition crisis that could affect long-term growth prospects.”
A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study, Salceda said, determined that an augmentation by 500 kcal per day can cause as much as two percentage point increase in real GDP per capita.
“That’s huge. Meanwhile, the mean daily energy intake of working adults was 1768 kcal/day or 74 percent of the Estimated Energy Requirements (EER) for this age group, according to another study by the FNRI.
That means working-age Filipinos have around 621 calories in deficiency. In my own calculations, that will result in at least P851,000 in lost productivity per person in one’s working lifetime,” Salceda noted.
Salceda cited the need for the government to ensure access to cheap food. “In the short-run, we won’t be able to avoid imports until we are able to produce cheaply. But we will also need to supplement our domestic production of the usual staple crops with nutritional buffers such as camote, cassava, small-scale poultry and eggs, and easy-to-produce vegetables,” Salceda said.
“That means we will have to support our main food system, but also encourage small-scale and local food production, through initiatives such as community and backyard farming, which we are already doing in my district.”
“Furthermore, we will need to pursue programs to boost sectors that are high in nutritional value relative to the cost, such as eggs, legumes, and root crops,” Salceda added.
“While supporting rice is good, rice as a foodstuff is extremely lacking in nutritional content. So, it won’t meet what our workforce and children need to be more productive participants in the economy,” Salceda said.
“That’s why I said the next Agri chief pick will be essential. I think given our current context, he or she will be the most important part of the country’s economic team.”
