Who will feed us?

At a wet market, a mother reaches for a kilo of rice; then hesitates. She recalculates. Puts some back.

No drama. No announcement. Just a humbling and quiet adjustment that millions of Filipinos now have to endure daily. This is how a food crisis begins – not with empty shelves, but with smaller meals. And this has been ongoing.

But behind every rising price is a deeper story we keep refusing to tell. The people who grow our food are disappearing. The average age of Filipino farmers is now over 55. Many are exhausted. Most are uncertain. And their children are leaving to avoid the fate lived by their parents and grandparents.

Farming no longer promises a future. It even barely sustains a present. This is not just a sector in decline. It is a broken system that guarantees a cycle of hardship after hardship.

For decades, we have managed food the way we managed emergencies. With quick fixes. When prices rise, we import. When supply tightens, we buy from abroad. It is fast. It is convenient. And it is politically safe. But this is also dangerously myopic. Shortsighted. At best, hiding a huge problem under the rug. Because almost every import solved today’s problem by deepening tomorrow’s.

And dependence, no matter how comfortable, is never free. While we look outward for supply, our farmers are left to struggle inward against rising input costs. Limited financing, weak infrastructure and the growing unpredictability of climate, especially in our country which is devastated by at least 20 typhoons and floods yearly. In other countries, agriculture is being systematically modernized, digitized and protected.

Here, farmers are left to survive, never to thrive. Being a farmer or a fisherman is synonymous to being poor and deprived of decent homes, access to good medical or health services, a liberating education and actually, even real dignity.

The result is inevitable. Lower than optimal productivity. Low income. Low hope. And when hope disappears, people follow. This is how a nation losses its farmers. Not all at once, but one decision at a time. One child choosing a different life. One field left unplanted. One season skipped. Until the loss becomes massive and irreversible.

For now, we don’t feel or notice it. Markets are still full. Imports fill the perennial gaps. The system appears to still work. But indeed, appearances are often deceiving. Because what we have been building is not resilience. It is reliance.

The more we rely on external sources for food, the more exposed we become to forces beyond our control such as global price shocks, geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions. When those pressure hit, they hit fast. And they hit hardest where dependence is deepest. The current war in Iran must have reminded us on this.

Cheaper food, in this context, is not truly a success story. At best, this is an expediency. A needed temporary relief. But a warning sign. A red flag.

It tells us clearly that we have opted for affordability today over stability tomorrow. That we have prioritized temporary convenience over robust capacity. That we have resigned to a system where the most essential sector is also the most neglected. This irony is difficult to ignore.

We call our farmers the backbone of the nation. But we treat them as an afterthought. We celebrate the harvests, but ignore the harvesters. We demand low prices, but remain indifferent to the cost of producing them. This contradiction is definitely unsustainable. Because food security is not just about supply. It is about control, infrastructure, system of support and national discipline.

The solutions are not entirely new. They have been discussed for years. Invest in irrigation that actually delivers water. Provide credit that enables growth instead of trapping farmers in debt. Build farm-to-market roads that reduce waste and increase income. Support technology that improves yield and reduces risk. Break the monstrous control of trading cartels.

No matter how hard the incumbent chief of the agriculture department, Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., works, this problem will persist. He simply inherited all these. Yes, despite his relentless efforts and dedication, the structural issues haunting the sector will prevail.

More than infrastructure, what we need is a shift in values. Farming must stop being seen as a fallback and start being recognized as a frontline in national development. Not a symbol of poverty, but a pillar of sovereignty and meaningful independence. A nation that cannot feed itself is not just economically vulnerable, it is strategically weak.

We are at a crossroads, whether we admit it or not. We can continue managing symptoms by importing more, reacting faster, hoping global markets remain stable. Or we can confront the harder and urgent truth. That food security cannot be outsourced. That resilience cannot be imported. And that every year we delay investing in our farmers is a year we move closer to a crisis we may no longer control.

One day, the question will no longer be why food is expensive. It will be why we allowed the very people who feed us to disappear. And by then, the cost of bringing them back may be far higher than anything we were trying to save. And on that day, the shelves might still be full, but the choices and control will no longer be ours. By the time we finally decide to rebuild what we allowed to disappear, we may find that the farmers we needed are no longer there – and neither is the time.

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