Ensuring Food Security of Lumads in Agusan Sur, Philippines

15 June 2020 Hits: 2163

Ensuring Food Security of Lumad Communities in Agusan Sur, Philippines

Background

The onset of COVID-19 and the draconian measures of the government to address the pandemic, such as the lockdowns and the community quarantines, aggravated the already tough condition of the Lumad families.

In response to imminent hunger people may experience, the government expanded the scope of its ongoing conditional cash transfer program for the poorest of the poor to the other poor people who were not beneficiaries of program. It promised to deliver food to the people during the duration of the lockdown as part of the heavily budgeted social amelioration program of the president.

However, since the declaration of the national state of health emergency in March 14 and the decrees that followed, the Lumad people in Agusan Sur, particularly in the Municipalities of Bunawan and Loreto and the rest of the communities, received the much touted food rations only once consisting of 5 kilos of rice, 3 small canned sardines, 3 cans of meat loaf and 3 packs of instant noodles. To make do with what they received, families had to limit one small cup of rice and boil the rice into porridge to ensure the 5 kilos of rice will last for a number of days. It is still uncertain when the community quarantine will be lifted that will allow people to make a living as they wait for a possible second round of food distribution.

Peoples’ feeling of uncertainties today includes the fear of being jobless or having no means of income when restrictions of movement are eased. The Lumad people in Agusan have real basis for their feelings of uncertainties and fears. Because of the nature of the pandemic, social movement of people will still be confined by large extents as the lockdowns.