Urbanization: To Cause Danger in Food Security

by Erika Gem Criste

The Philippines is an archipelago consisting of 7,107 islands covering about 300,000 square kilometers (30 million hectares), of which land has a total of 295,170 square kilometers and 1,830 square kilometers of water. For years Philippines remained primarily an agricultural country where most citizens enjoyed the life in rural areas and support themselves with agriculture.

The country’s agricultural sector is made up of 4 sub-sectors namely: farming, fishing, livestock and forestry. Top ten commodities of the country includes: rice, sugar, maize, pig meat, wheat and products, bananas, coconut oil, cassava and products, fats and animals, and fruits.

Agriculture as a primary means of survival for the people has already helped in the development of the country in multitudes. Innovations came and large infrastructures start to rise. Building of settlement areas, roads, market, and private and non-private sectors of businesses are growing numbers.

Urbanization as to the goal of the country by the year 2000 has been greatly observed. Philippines gave birth to an industrialized economy though not to the extent level of overall economic boom, but it’s slowly coping up to reach a higher rank in terms of development.

Getting bigger…

In general the large scale conversion of Philippines from rural to an urbanize nation congruently have a continuous rapid increase in population. Ranking as the 12th country in terms of population, Philippines currently have 101,028,727 number of people.

The people living in urban areas are 50.45% while those that live in rural areas are 49.55%.

Rapid urbanization and increase in population can outstretch the capacity of a country to absorb and cater the ever growing number of inhabitants in the Philippines. Bigger problems then would occur if this could go out of control.

Closely looking at the possibilities of this 1.38% of the total population of the world is a serious demand for survival --- food. On large scales, land required for food depends on population number, average diet, crop yields and prevailing conversion efficiencies within production chains.

The amount of land required to feed a person declined, thus large number of people means large capacity of food supply. Urbanization has been the concern of gradual rise of problem towards food consumption supply in the country.

This has been one of the pressing problems and concerns of agricultural sector, the rampant conversion of these lands to build more infrastructures. Examples of these are the making of golf courses, residential subdivisions, and industrial parks or resorts.

It has been shown that the nation was losing rice lands at a rate of 2.300 hectares per year. Land owners are at their peak of desperate need that they are forced to sell their land for they find if more profitable in exchange of cash.

According to farmers when it comes to land concerns, a lot should be taken into consideration. The number of workers needed to run the production and processes like planting and harvesting, the need of capital for seeds, and the budget for fertilizers and pesticides.

Where it all boils down to

Uncontrolled urbanization may cause a greater danger to the Philippines if left unaddressed. Problems such as these make take place:

1. Food availability – Agriculture will be challenged to meet the demand of growing population, thus more food will be needed. Land use changes due to city expansion can also mean irreversible losses in biodiversity.

2. Food stability – expansion means that there will be more food that needs to be transported and distributed. Pressure lies upon the rural infrastructures, transport technologies, and food distribution outlets and since this is already insufficient in urban areas, the stability of food may jeopardize.

3. Food safety – urbanization does not only apply in buildings and infrastructures but the increase the street foods as well leveled up with it. Foods like these are consumed by most of the citizen and it lacks proper sanitation and could cause health complications.

4. Food access – urban dwellers are dependent on their income in terms of food consumption but financially unstable families are forced to level up with these higher class in terms of buying food and their prices.

Addressing the problem

Infrastructures are good like those that are concerned more on the field of agriculture. Roads and bridges from farm areas to barangay center to trade center port are a great help. However if it government lacks focus on this then we have a big problem for our supply of food.

While we respect the government in trying to develop our country into a better nation, there is also need for them to inspect and give their financial support at the agricultural land and develop it more.

Under the 2013 National Budget, Capital Outlays (CO) is said to increase the budget by 15.7%, from P328.3 billion to P380 billion in the help to boost one of the important sectors in the survival of Philippines, the Agricultural industries.

Also in the 2015 budget message of President Benigno S. Aquino, he said that “P86.1 billion allocated for the Agricultural Development Program was an integration of the budget of the DA for the rice production and consumption targets, the budget of the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) for irrigation, the budget of the National Food Authority for buffer stocking, the budget of the Agriculture Credit Policy Council for credit requirements, and the budget of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) for research and development. With P14.5 billion allocated for farm-to-market roads that would link poor farmers to markets and trading centers.”

In addition, President Aquino said, “We will invest of P26.0 billion in agriculture infrastructure that will cover 20,650 hectares with new irrigation and drainage areas and restore existing ones in 23,200 hectares. This investment, focused on the top 33 rice-producing provinces, will help achieve a target production of 4.48 metric tons of rice per hectare.”

Agricultural experts as well made a move to ensure the productivity of agricultural land despite the urbanization. They made improvements on the expansion of areas, used certified seeds in palay production, high yielding varieties and crop shifting from corn and rubber to sugarcane especially in Northern Mindanao, additional bearing trees and plants, increased area harvested, early control or pest and diseases and timely application of fertilizer and pesticides.

Not just that they also increased live inventories of finishers in hog farms, expansion of the number of animal stocks for daily production and increased harvest in plantation forest.

Now that there are projects proposed by the government and allocate budget for a specific use in agricultural land, it would be a hope for the Filipinos that food security will no longer be a problem caused by urbanization.

Recent record of Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Statistics Division (FAOSTAT) shows that in terms of food security, the prevalence of undernourishment decreased. From 26.30% during the year 1992 to 11.50 in 2014 is indeed a good sign that almost all people are getting enough supply of food.

Average dietary supply adequacy also increased from 105.00 during 1992 to 121.00 in 2014, this is due to the increase of population that needs to be met by the food supply.

There are certain factors wherein the Philippines have been improving but it needs a stable development in order to cope up with the changing demands of the people.

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Sources:

http://faostat3.fao.org/home/E

http://www.gov.ph/2014/07/30/2015-budget-message-of-president-aquino/

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/esag/docs/RapidUrbanizationFoodSecurity.pdf

http://www.tesda.gov.ph/About/TESDA/69

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