The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is urging middle-income countries, like the Philippines, to reshape their food system to attain food security for all.
In its 2014-2015 Global Food Policy Report, the IFPRI said food systems can be reshaped by focusing on
nutrition and health, closing the gender gap in agriculture and improving rural infrastructure.
“It may seem counterintuitive, but these growing economies play a key role in our ability to adequately and nutritiously feed the world,” IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan said.
“It has become clear that the factors that influence people’s nutrition go well beyond food and agriculture to include drinking water and sanitation, the role of women and the quality of caregiving, among others,” he added.
Reshaping food systems in countries like the Philippines may be crucial given the serious threat posed by climate change to food security.
The IFPRI noted that the Philippines continues to struggle with the damage caused by Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) on its food supply. Another typhoon, Ruby (international code name Hagupit), also caused significant damage to the farm sector.
The extent of the damage wrought by Yolanda and other succeeding typhoons forced the national government to push back its rice self-sufficiency target to 2016.
“Looking toward the future, the region continues to focus on major food-security challenges caused by the 2008 food-price crisis, although a certain sense of satisfaction is justified, as the region has not experienced another rice-price spike, even though global markets for wheat and corn have been quite unstable,” the report stated.
The report also stresses the link between sanitation and nutrition, noting findings in Bangladesh that show dramatic reductions in open defecation contributed to large declines in the number of stunted children.
The research found that Bangladeshi children living in places where open defecation had been reduced were taller than children in neighboring West Bengal, India, where open defecation is still common, even at the same levels of
economic wealth.
The report also discussed the strong evidence that food insecurity was a contributing factor to instability in the Middle East. Food insecurity also draws attention to the pressing need to regulate food production to prevent food-borne diseases. The IFPRI also said there’s a need to help small-family farmers move up by increasing their incomes or move out to nonfarm employment, as well as improve social protection for the rural poor.
The institute also urged governments to help support the role of small-scale fishermen in satisfying the global demand for fish.
“We made some important strides toward global food and nutrition security in 2014,” Fan noted. “For example, nutrition shot up to the top of the global agenda and the concept of climate-smart agriculture has gained a foothold. Now we need to keep these and other food-policy issues high on the global development agenda to ensure we eliminate hunger and malnutrition worldwide,” Fan said.
The IFPRI was established in 1975 to identify and analyze alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world.