Four years before the deadline for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, many countries are lagging behind in terms of transforming their food systems, according to the latest study of the Food Systems Countdown Initiative (FSCI). Based on the FSCI study, the Philippines is one of the countries that will not meet its targets for a number of indicators by 2030. Against the global benchmark, the Philippines meets 5 of 40 assessed indicators while another 18 are ‘close or moderately close,’ and 17 are ‘far or very far.’
Of the indicators where the Philippines has been assessed to be ‘far or very far,’ the most alarming are those that have been categorized under diets, nutrition and health. Data from FSCI, a global interdisciplinary research collaboration co-led by Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, showed that the Philippines will likely miss the targets related to reducing the number of people experiencing food insecurity and those who cannot afford a healthy diet. Based on the performance of the Philippines, it would need more time to at least slash by half the current number of Filipinos who cannot buy nutritious food and those that are food insecure.
From now until 2030, FSCI said the country should log an annual improvement of 22.3 percent if it is to meet the 5.8-percent global benchmark for the food insecure indicator, which reached 33 percent in 2024. As for the healthy diet indicator, the Philippines had 44 percent of its population unable to afford it in 2024, far from the 2-percent benchmark. To meet the global benchmark, the country must record an annual improvement of 32.9 percent.
Eating healthy, however, would entail the implementation of drastic reforms in the agricultural value chain and the food system of the Philippines. These reforms should have the end goal of enabling Filipinos to buy fresh produce and sources of protein, such as meat and poultry. And these changes will not yield the desired results if the national government and the local governments will not work together.
The investments required in human capital that will enable the Philippines to make the leap to high-income status will be considerable and may be challenging to find given the country’s shrinking fiscal space. As resources are becoming scarce, it is therefore imperative for the government, together with private sector stakeholders, to prioritize the establishment of a sustainable food system-one that would allow Filipinos to flourish and the country to achieve its economic ambitions.