Securing food in the Philippines...

Last Week I heard a former president speak to an audience of grade 8 students. The values he was extolling were sound and his messages were relevant to the students listening; love and care for each other, promote unity, look after your environment, don't waste your food. Everything was supported with an appropriate anecdote and I nodded in approval along with the other teachers in the audience. But I stopped halfway through my nod when he said, "think of those starving children in Africa".
Yes, we need to think about them. But what about those starving children here in the Philippines? Shouldn't we think about them? When addressing a group of affluent students in the country's capital, should we not take every opportunity to break down our school walls, burst the bubble and force our children to open their eyes to what is happening just down the road?
Yes, there are too many African countries that do indeed scream out RRREDDD!! on the UN global hunger map. But the orange of the Philippines, indicating that between 15-20% of our global population is malnourished is, to me, more shocking.
Why?
You need only fly over the Philippines to answer this question. Our land is Soooo GGREEEENN and our seas full of fish.....
We are a relatively small country and we are very fertile indeed.
And yet, we are now importing rice instead of exporting it, and we have ever growing communities inside and outside of the cities unable to feed themselves sufficiently to maintain basic health.
Over the last 4 months I have spent time with two of these communities:
The rural experience:
The Aeta people in Zambales, displaced in the early 90's due to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, forced into unfamiliar farming and still struggling.
The urban experience:
The squatters in Tondo, Manila. Manage to pick enough trash to scrape together enough to buy rice but little else. Due to squalid living conditions, most have worms so nutrition is no sooner taken in than it is lost again and the struggle continues.
We need many things to ensure food security here:
Decent governance, responsibile management, effective education...
...But first we need to talk.
"Those starving children in THE PHILIPPINES" need to be our anecdote when discussing waste with the future leaders of this country.