An urban farmer shows the fish she helped to raise, through the Grow QC Food Security program.
BEFORE the pandemic, hunger was already a very real and very palpable problem. UN agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO), released the first comprehensive report on food insecurity and nutrition since the start of the pandemic which showed that the rates of hunger and malnutrition in the world increased from 8.4 percent in 2019 to 10 percent in 2020. Covid-19 had a significant share in this increase.
The largest city in the Philippines, Quezon City was hit particularly hard. During a high-level discussion on policies and strategies for Covid-19 recovery organized by the United Nations (UN) Philippines, Mayor Joy Belmonte shared the difficulties the city government had faced, most of which came without warning.