Everyone loves food, everyone needs food but not everyone can have food each day. World Food Day which was commemorated last October 16 reminds us to reflect about the value and importance of food for ourselves and for all.
How did we celebrate that important day?
A number got moving - making sure that everyone is aware about the importance of healthy, sustainable food production and accessible distribution to as many as possible. "Feeding the world, caring for the earth!
#GMOFREE Cebu continues to remind all to remember to support eco-farmers, those who practice organic farming, those who plant, raise, and harvest healthy food crops to share with consumers.
All are invited to support the eco-farmers and buy their organic harvest every Saturday, from 9-5, at Handuraw Gorordo, located very close to UP Cebu.
We are also reminded to do our own share to produce healthy food in our own homes. A home garden for every family can be a small but significant step to ensure healthy production and supply for both people and our Mother Earth.
Schools, churches, offices, and other institutions and organizations are also encouraged to do their share and have small pots and gardens wherever possible. Healthy food from organic gardens and farms will guarantee healthy and sustainable food supply, again another small step to maintain and sustain our people and a healthy Mother Earth.
With homes and communities producing food sustainably, hunger should never again bother any child or adult anywhere in our vicinity or anywhere else in the world. With everyone practicing eco-farming and raising their own food at home, food security can be ensured for our communities, our provinces, and our whole country.
The importance and centrality of food for every person is so obvious yet priority is not given to sustainable and healthy food production, access, and distribution.
This year's World Food Day in the Philippines is accompanied by the historic walk for climate change, with advocates calling everyone's attention to help curb and mitigate further global warming and adverse climate change. The experience of typhoon Haiyan victims in Tacloban Leyte especially should remind all about the need to go organic, to junk GMO products, to lessen and effectively manage waste, to shift to non-polluting energy sources, among other earth-protective measures.
How many of the disaster victims have risen beyond the tragedy and moved on? How many have been fed adequately and sustainably?
So much to reflect about food for all, especially the hungry and the poor. So much small steps each one can take to provide sustainable food for all, to secure healthy food production and supply, to combat hunger and need, to fight climate change, not only during World Food Day.
Our ancestors come to mind whenever food is mentioned.
Up in Ifugao and Banaue, our forefathers left the important reminder about the primacy of food AND SUSTAINABLE and healthy food production. With everyone's cooperation, they built and left behind for all generations their beautiful, still useful rice terraces that continue to showcase their sensitivity to and their partnership with themselves and nature in producing and providing rice for their community then and for all.
No big machines, no chemicals, no artificial fertilizers- but they showed how they used their brains and their knowledge together to irrigate the terraces naturally, to maximize production to feed whole communities, to sustain the structures throughout time.
We are forever grateful to these ancestors for showing us the path to sustainable life for our people. We need to learn more from our indigenous peoples about how they have managed to sustain their community for centuries until now, despite so much threats and challenges to their natural environment and their sustainable survival practices.
Finally, have you come across this FB post- " why are organic food items so expensive? The appropriate question should rather be, why are junk food so cheap?"
If you care for your life and for your health, then should not the path to take be obviously the one less traveled (the natural path) but a path not often taken by those who wish to profit at your expense ( the GMO producers and distributors)?