FINDING ANSWERS
The increased prices of milk, eggs, and basic vegetables like malunggay and kangkong have become unreachable for very poor Filipinos who can barely afford the basic necessities to survive.
This is worrisome because eggs, for instance, is the primary source of protein for the poor, especially so when it used to be their most affordable food item. But with the cheapest egg now costing around ₱8, the poor have to eat less eggs or avoid it altogether.
Similar to eggs, prices of milk also rose this month by 11.3 percent, according to latest inflation figures of the Philippine Statistics Authority. The PSA said “the higher food inflation was mainly brought about by the increased year-on-year growth in the index of vegetables, tubers, plantains, cooking bananas and pulses at 37.8 percent in January 2023, from 32.4 percent in December 2022.”
Thus, prices of malunggay (moringa) and kangkong (water spinach) have doubled compared to its prices a few months ago. Instead of being sold at the usual price of ₱5 per bundle in Metro Manila wet markets, it’s now sold at ₱10. If one gets lucky, two bundles could be bought at ₱15.
For those with money to spare, ₱8 or ₱10 won’t matter. But for the very poor among us, the measly amount could spell the difference whether a family of five could each eat an egg, or divide and share a single fried egg, or have no eggs at all for breakfast.
Those struggling to make ends meet would also find it difficult to get their daily nutritional requirements from vegetables that have become their favorite simply because they used to be cheap and affordable.
“The nutrients in kangkong is almost equal to milk, banana and orange. It can reduce blood pressure, gives immunity to cancer, improve vision, boost immunity, and treat skin diseases,” says the National Nutrition Council (NNC) of the Philippines. “Kangkong is a rich source of various vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. It also contains potassium and iron.”
Malunggay, on the other hand, is deemed a miracle plant. “The leaves have seven times more vitamin C than oranges and 15 times more potassium than bananas. Moringa oleifera contains calcium, protein, iron, and essential amino acids, which help your body heal and build muscle,” the NNC explains. “It is also packed with antioxidants, substances that can protect cells from damage and may boost your immune system.”
So vast are the health benefits of malunggay that I have been promoting its use thru our advocacy group aimed at establishing a “Malunggay Republic” and make it truly the “national vegetable” of the Philippines.
Thus, it is imperative that prices of basic food items that help a lot to help fight malnutrition and undernutrition, especially among Filipino children, are not beyond the reach of poor families.
A World Bank (WB) study said that childhood undernutrition, long considered to be a “silent pandemic” plaguing poor families even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, is of such high levels in the Philippines that it “can lead to a staggering loss of the country’s human and economic potential.”
The WB report released in 2021 said that our country’s rate of stunting, deemed to be the worst form of undernutrition, was 28.8 percent in 2019 among children under age five – placing the Philippines “fifth among countries in the East Asia and Pacific region, and among the top 10 countries globally.”
The UNICEF has warned about it. “Stunting in the first 1,000 days is associated with poorer performance in school, both because malnutrition affects brain development, and also because malnourished children are more likely to get sick and miss school,” according to the UNICEF’s flagship report, the 2019 edition of The State of the World’s Children.
Thus, to help fight food inflation that worsens malnutrition or leads to inadequate nutrition, increasing food production is vital. As I’ve said before, local government units and the national government can do a lot to increase food production leading to lower food prices.
LGUs can mobilize people to increase productivity and augment supply to lower prices of food. Former Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor, when he once guested in my Teleradyo program Sagot Ko ‘Yan which I used to host, cited the importance of urban agriculture.
He said that when Cuba was suffering from widespread hunger resulting from the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the late 1980s, Cubans planted fruits, vegetables, even herbs, and raised chickens in almost every place feasible – in their apartments, rooftops, in balconies.
LGUs can also establish and intensify the Food Always In The Home (FAITH) program that I created in 1995 in Laguna. The highly successful program, which has since been adopted by the National Nutrition Council, enabled people to produce clean nutritious food in their backyards, thereby reducing home food costs by as much as 50 percent while improving family nutrition.
Indeed, so much can be done with LGUs and the national government working with the people to fight food inflation and malnutrition.
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