Comprehensive context of SDG#2 ZERO HUNGER

It is heartwarming to witness promising steps taken to promote and achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #2 - Zero Hunger- in Cebu.

June 20, 2025. Among Cebu’s newly elected, Cebu Governor Pam Baricuatro made the first/earliest official statement about her vision of a “Busog, Himsog Nga Katawhan” (Well-fed, Healthy People) through her “Pagkaon Alang sa Masa’ Community-based Food Security Strategy.”

August 4, at the opening of the month-long celebration marking the 456th Founding Anniversary of Cebu Province, Governor Pam reaffirmed her commitment to build a food-secure and agriculturally resilient with food security and healthcare as the pillars for her administration.

““I believe that food and healthcare go hand in hand. You can’t expect a child to learn or a worker to thrive if they’re hungry, that’s why, alongside health, food security is a top priority of this administration,” she emphasized.

Sharing that because she was the Executive Director of Simply Share Foundation aimed at combatting hunger and promoting food security, “so, this advocacy is very close to my heart. Our true strength lies in how we care for one another— and in ensuring that no one is left behind.”

Governor Pam’s advocacy versus hunger through food security and resilient agriculture falls within the United Nation’s Social Agenda advocating SDG2-Zero Hunger.

The official wording/wider context of SDG2 is: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, highlighting the "complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation, and sustainable agriculture".

The following 8 targets of SDG2 can serve as guide that everyone can use to help eradicate world hunger by 2030:

"Target 2.1: UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO SAFE AND NUTRITIOUS FOOD - end hunger, ensure access by all people, in particular the poor/people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe/nutritious/sufficient food all year round;

Target 2.2: END ALL FORMS OF MALNUTRITION - including achieving, BY 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting/wasting in children under 5, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant/lactating women and older persons;

Target 2.3: DOUBLE THE PRODUCTIVITY AND INCOMES OF ALL SMALL-SCALE FOOD PRODUCERS – and in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure/equal access to land/other productive resources/inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment;

Target 2.4: SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION AND RESILIENT AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES - ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change/extreme weather/drought/flooding/other disasters and that progressively improve land/soil quality;

Target 2.5: MAINTAIN THE GENETIC DIVERSITY IN FOOD PRODUCTION - maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants/farmed/domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national/regional/international levels, and promote access to and fair/equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed;

Target 2.6: INVEST IN RURAL INFRASTRUCTURE, AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGY AND GENE BANKS - Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant/livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries;

Target 2.7: PREVENT AGRICULTURAL TRADE RESTRICTIONS, MARKET DISTORTIONS AND EXPORT SUBSIDIES - correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round; and,

Target 2.8: ENSURE STABLE FOOD COMMODITY MARKETS AND TIMELY ACCESS TO INFORMATION - Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility."