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Ending hunger and malnutrition is a critical sustainability priority both globally and in the Philippines. Numerous food and nutrition security (FNS) policies have been put into effect nationwide through various local ordinances and issuances, but policy scholars emphasize the need for stronger policy coherence to ensure meaningful systemic change.
Source: PIDS
Sustainable Development Goal 2 aims to end hunger by 2030, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. It emphasizes food and nutrition security, which is achieved through the availability, accessibility, and utilization of adequate food. Food and nutrition security is a global issue, with approximately 2.33 billion people suffering from moderate to severe food insecurity. Asia’s population, particularly in the Philippines, a third of Filipino households (31.4 percent) were food insecure based on the 2023 National Nutrition Survey.
A discussion paper by Jennifer Marie Amparo et al. examines local FNS policies in the Philippines, analyzing 252 policies from the National Nutrition Council database. The study highlights three key findings: (1) the three substantive areas in the local FNS policies, which are nutrition governance, nutrition interventions, and food systems; (2) high vertical policy coherence, anchored on national and global commitments, and (3) limited horizontal policy coherence across food systems, primarily targeting distribution and retail.
The policy recommendations include: (1) extending the assessment of policy coherence, analyzing the internal coherence and how these policies are affected or affect the impacts of disasters and disruptions to food and nutrition security; (2) exploring the development of a Food and Nutrition Plan and Program; (3) promoting a convergence mindset and building capacities of policymakers and implementers in the FNS framework; and (4) developing impact metrics and mechanics on how local policy adoption and implementation feeds to achievement of national policies and FNS goals.
Reference: Amparo, J. , de Juras, A. , Baril, S. , Gargarino, A. , and A. Gonzales. 2025. Scaling Up and Scaling Wide: Food and Nutrition Policies across the Food Systems in the Philippines. UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies. Retrieved August 29, 2025 from https://cids.up.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Scaling-Up-and-Scaling-Wide_Food-and-Nutrition-Policies-across-the-Food-Systems-in-the-Philippines.pdf
