Reports nearly a month ago announced the news that the number of hungry people has reached more than a billion people in the world. In the Philippines, recent surveys reflected the effect of the economic downturn on the unemployed, with nearly 17 percent going hungry in the first quarter of this year. Our people have been chronically undernourished and this situation has reached crisis levels (officially) in last year’s rice shortage.

Yet why are we unable to produce the food that we need? Why do our people teeter on the brink of going hungry everyday? What can scientists do in this situation? Continuing our series on what role scientists and engineers play in our society, we shall discuss today the issue of food security and self-sufficiency.

We start with history. Our capacity to produce food for our own needs and to ensure that each one has enough nutrition to live comfortably (food self-sufficency and security, respectively) has been destroyed since we were colonized by Spain and the United States. Spain rearranged traditional agricultural production patterns into en-comiendas and then later into haciendas leading to monocrop agriculture geared for export.

The United States maintained this situation and later instituted unequal treaties that led to the current export-oriented and import-dependent agriculture system that we have. Farm implements and inputs are mainly imported while production is geared for the needs of the so-called world market. Sugar, abaca, tobacco and rice are but a few of these export crops.

With our accession to the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture in 1995, the Philippines incurred a total agricultural trade deficit of $3.5 billion in its first five years, compared to a $1.69 billion surplus in the previous period. From 1995 to 1999, the country exported 8.25 million tons of banana, pineapple and mango, but had to import 4.74 million tons of rice and 1.18 million tons of corn just to meet the barest of domestic necessities.

This continued dependence on imported food shows the food insecurity of our people. What perpetuates this situation is the continuing lack of control of local food producers—our farmers—over resources such as land, seeds, fertilizer and other agricultural equipment.

In order to achieve food security and self-sufficiency, control and ownership of land must be given back to the farmers. Farmers and the Filipino people must have decisive control over the agricultural production system to ensure food security and sufficiency and as opposed to the current production pattern which is mainly dependent on the whims of “market forces” and the profiteering of traders and big landlords.

This situation calls not merely for a technological fix as the Green Revolution in the 1960s and the so-called Gene Revolution of the past decade tried to do. These fixes would not work on its own without a corresponding change in the socio-political relations that perpetuated the problem in the first place. Introducing blindly these technological fixes would only aggravate existing social inequities while alienating the very people it purports to give benefit to.

With landlords controlling large tracts of agricultural lands, there is little room for development, as they would rather impose worse produce-sharing ratios, which leaves our poor farmers deeper and deeper in their debt. To be able to ensure that we can feed our nation, there is a great need to break the unequal landlord-farmer relationship. This relationship is based on the control of land.

Pending bills in Congress, such as the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill or GARB, seeks to address this situation. Genuine land reform entails complete control of farmers over the land they till without the oppressive land-rent system. In addition to this, there should be a simultaneous national plan for domestic food production along with directed research and subsidy to support production.

A national food security and self-sufficiency plan includes true development efforts to improve farmlands physically, mechanization of farming processes, agricultural research and extension and prioritization of food production for national consumption. Equally important would be the provision of agricultural assistance such as farm credits, knowledge transfer, infrastructures, farm equipments, and agricultural inputs. Farmer organizations and cooperatives are necessary to facilitate the needed assistance to improve well-being of the peasants.

Working with existing farmer organizations and cooperatives, agriculturists and well-meaning scientists can directly bring their discoveries to them. AGHAM currently helps communities in this way. Yet one should also realize that this is a short term solution as long term food security and self-sufficiency would be contingent on genuine land reform.

Furthermore, as agriculture can provide raw materials for industries and a market for its products as well, there is a need to develop it within plans for national industrialization so that design and manufacturing of machines and facilities fulfills the requirements of a self-sufficient and secured food production and distribution.