Cebu province faces risk of hunger problem-DA

Cebu province is now at risk of getting into a hunger problem considering the increasing population viz a viz the decreasing agricultural resources, said Department of Agriculture regional director Eduardo Lecciones recently.

A lot of land conversion had affected Cebu''s agricultural resources, said Lecciones, warning that unless measures are enforced to manage the population growth, the province would soon fall to hunger problem.

Cebu province however is not yet classified as "vulnerable area experiencing hunger", a scenario of dire ratio of availability of food to population that may eventually result to a hunger problem situation.

Lecciones said that a recent Social Weather Station survey showed that the only province in Central Visayas tagged as "vulnerable area" is Oriental Negros where the marginal coconut farmers largely depend their resources for food from the quarterly harvest of their crop.

The Bureau of Plant Industry7 has already spearheaded the Gulayan ng Masa program to help the Oriental Negros farmers to plant vegetables for steady supply of food while waiting for their coconut harvest.

Under the program, the DA-7 will distribute to each farmer one pack of assorted ''pinakbet'' vegetable seeds of ampalaya, squash, eggplant, okra and string beans.

President Gloria Arroyo earlier created the Anti-Hunger Task Force, headed by the Department of Health, to speed up the implementation of government''s hunger mitigation programs, such as the Gulayan ng Masa and the Barangay Food Terminals.

Lecciones said the BFT is imperative especially in metropolitan areas, like Metro Manila, where their distribution centers are far from production areas.

Cebu City however does not face such problem because Dalaguete town, the so-called vegetable hub of the province, is only two hours away from city''s Carbon Market, the primary distribution center, said Lecciones.

Another hunger-mitigating program is the Food-for-School program of the National Food Authority, involving the distribution of close to 25,000 bags of rice to selected areas in the region.

NFA regional director Danilo Bunabon said these iron-fortified rice are delivered to the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Department of Education, which in turn distribute a kilo of rice to each of the children of daycare centers in very poor towns every day over a certain period.

In Cebu, there were 57 schools from five districts that were listed as beneficiaries of the program but recently these had already reached their "improved nutrition state."

Only some towns in Bohol and Oriental Negros provinces remain in the list of the program, the NFA-7 said. - Ferliza C. Contratista/RAE