Organic Crops to Counter Children’s Malnutrition in Bicol

Legazpi City (PNA) – – Organic crops produced by agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in Bicol will be used to fight malnutrition among children in Bicol, according to the regional office here of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

Local smallholder farmers, mostly ARBs, will grow organic crops and the yields will be used in the feeding program for malnourished children organized by a multi-agency group called Partnership Against Hunger and Poverty (PAHP), DAR Regional director Luis Bueno Jr. on Friday here said.

The PHAP is a collaborative effort among the DAR, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) that works closely with the rural communities to provide needed social and economic services toward eliminating hunger and alleviating poverty in the countryside.

Supported by the Brazilian government, the project’s framework aligns the different mandates of each of these national agencies with the assistance of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Brazilian government has expressed interest in providing technical assistance to the national feeding program and the accompanying linked program of assistance to smallholder farmers and farm households.

The required technical assistance will be focused on the provision of advisory services in understanding the situation in Brazil and in the design of the joint objectives of increasing the income of family farms and ensuring the social protection of the most vulnerable population.

Under the project’s framework, the DSWD, which is tasked with hunger mitigation, will implement a feeding program through an organization in project areas of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) beneficiaries.

The DA, on the other hand, is tasked to ensure food self-sufficiency in project areas through the downloading of various agricultural productivity projects that encourage more participation from local farmers.

The DAR, with its task on poverty alleviation, will carry out the strengthening of the agrarian reform beneficiary organizations (ARBOs) engage in the production and supply of food items required in the feeding program.

As a boost to the partnership scheme, Bueno said, the three agencies recently entered a team-up agreement with Rep. Leni Robredo of Camarines Sur’s 3rd congressional district towards the feeding with healthy and balanced diet of Naga City’s 2,700 Day Care Center children.

Robredo is a staunch advocate of food security and children’s nutrition, leading her into filing a bill in Congress that seeks to institutionalize the objectives of the PAHP through the streamlining of food procurement and distribution systems nationwide.

Robredo’s House Bill No. 6062 or the National food Security Bill of 2015 intends, among others, to create a feeding program for children 0-13 years old which, she said, will address hunger and malnutrition in the entire country.

The neophyte lady legislator said “the eradication of hunger and poverty should be our utmost priority” as she quoted for senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino as saying, “the very first freedom that has to be won is freedom from hunger. When you are always concerned about where the next meal will come from, everything else becomes irrelevant.”

The bill also seeks to create a system where small-scale food producers are given constant demand by way of requiring the government to procure at least 30 percent of supplies needed for the feeding program from this sector – providing them a steady source of income.

“We hope to address hunger by alleviating poverty. This can be done by establishing a National Feeding Program in conjunction with the creation of a sustainable livelihood program for our small-scale producers.” Robredo said.

The team-up identified pre-school children in Naga City and in selected barangays in Camarines Sur’s municipalities of Ocampo, Pili and Calbanga — all within Robredo’s district — as pilot beneficiaries of the feeding program.

Under the scheme, Bueno said, organic vegetables grown by ARBs in Camarines Sur would be made available for the feeding program to be handled by the DSWD.

These farm produce woulds be sold to local food caterers contracted to prepare the children dishes, Bueno said.

This arrangement is commendable not only that it would assure the steady supply of fresh vegetables and other organically-produced crops to the feeding program but also convey to children and parents the importance of producing organic nutritious foods for healthy living, he said.

Besides, it will also open an additional market for the produce of ARBs and stimulate the economy of smallholder farmers while producing crops that are safe, being not treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The PAHP’s pilot implementation in Bicol, Bueno said, also focuses on the establishment of food hubs that will help empower rural communities to become economically sustainable.

The food hubs, he said, were localized version of Brazil’s community food banks which served as a facility that could store food items for the DSWD’s feeding program and other similar on-the-ground programs of other agencies like the education, health and local government units (LGUs).

Local smallholder farmers, particularly those with the ARBOs, would be tasked to ensure a steady food supply for the food hubs, Bueno said.

This will be done through the agency’s Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity Economic Support Services (ARCCESS) program and the Agrarian Reform Communities Projects II (ARCP II) that carry out the strengthening of the ARBOs, he said.

PAHP, he said, operated under the vision and aspiration for every Filipino to have adequate access to food at all times and eradicate absolute poverty and to achieve it, public resources were to be developed to yield the greatest sustained impact on hunger-free goal by applying lessons of the past with respect to rural growth and stagnation.

Other pilot project areas of this program in Bicol are the entire province of Camarines Norte and the municipality of Castilla, in the province of Sorsogon. (PNA) RMA/FGS/DOC/CBD/SGP