Food is political. What we choose to eat reflects our world view—how we view our bodies (“Nakakataba kaya ito?”), what we think is right or wrong (i.e., kosher and halal food), who we want to share it with, what values we treasure, how we were brought up. I also view food choices as a conscious decision to support a particular farming system. So whenever I check our kitchen, all I can see is a mixed bag of choices and contradictions. On one hand, our family chooses to support small organic farmers by buying brown rice and honey sourced from farmers’ cooperatives. On the other, we value the convenience and affordability of packaged snacks and canned food made by industrial food manufacturers.
It was this interest on the intersection of food and politics that spurred me to endure the two-hour commute from our house in Tondo to Ateneo de Manila University’s campus in Katipunan early last month to attend the Food for Peace forum organized by Arete, Ateneo’s Fine Arts Department, Babai Women’s Network, Earth Kitchen, Gantala Press, Good Food Community, HIzon’s Catering, Kritika Kultura, Me & My Vege Mouth and Saltwater Cinema. Billed as a forum on food, empowerment and community healing, it featured several speakers who gave insights on how our personal dietary choices can have a huge social impact.
One of these speakers is Charlene Tan, founder of Good Food Community—a social enterprise that helps smallholder farmers and indigenous communities in Tarlac, Benguet, Mountain Province and Rizal reach out to their customers in Metro Manila. Based on the concept of community-supported agriculture, consumers subscribe to the harvest of farms supported by the Good Food Community in order to get a weekly supply of fresh and organic fruits and vegetables.
Tan said most farmers that she talked to were reluctant to sell organic vegetables, as they believed consumers won’t pay for expensive produce. Consumers, meanwhile, go for their “default choice”—processed foods and crops grown with too much pesticide, as they’re widely available.
“With community-supported agriculture, these choices are intimately linked. There’s now a way for you to choose what’s best for you and your family. There’s now a way for you to choose what’s best for the farmers,” Tan said.
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Another factor that encouraged me to attend the Food for Peace forum was its special focus on Marawi City, which is currently recovering from the destruction wrought by a five-month-long armed conflict. As a journalist who has covered Asian agriculture and commodities for more than 20 years, I was curious to know how food and farming would play a part in Marawi’s road to recovery.
My curiosity was partially sated by Sarah Queblatin’s, founder of the Green ReLeaf Initiative, a nonprofit group that supports local communities who are recovering from disasters and conflict.
One of Green ReLeaf’s projects is codesigning a permaculture garden that can provide food, potable water supply and livelihood to over 500 people displaced by the Marawi siege and are now living at the Ma’ha Al-Nor Madrasa in Iligan City. The garden has a simple composting system, a rainwater catchment storage and nursery made up of edible and medicinal plants that were suggested by the community members. They started designing the garden in July and it was already operational by August. In October the garden has already yielded some greens, which the community members have harvested.
Permaculture, a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, was developed in the 1970s by Australian environmental designer David Holmgren and scientist/academician Bill Mollison. Permaculture is a sustainable agricultural system that is based on the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems. Queblatin, a permaculture designer herself, said permaculture is design based on “knowing the patterns, the flows of an ecosystem.”
“It’s inspired by indigenous way of seeing things. Things are interconnected. We’re not separate from the earth,” she said.
Queblatin added that working on the land is important for internally displaced persons like those who were displaced by the Marawi conflict, as land is tied to one’s identity.
“If you lose political status, you [also] lose [your] land and home. Having the tools [that will] enable [you] to be self-sufficient and self-reliant is very important,” she said.
Apart from its sustainability, what impressed me more about Green ReLeaf’s project in Iligan City is its emphasis on offering a more holistic model. This is because the project is based on the “regenerative” framework.
“Regenerative design approaches is a change of perception. It’s changing the way we think on how we build and how we design,” Queblatin said, adding that regenerative approaches always work on four dimensions—social, cultural, economic and ecological.
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Chef and economist Assad Baunto is, perhaps, one person who can talk more on how food can be an instrument in recovering from the Marawi siege.
If there’s one thing that Assad remembered most about fleeing Marawi to escape the growing violence, it was his mother who was worrying that the rice she was cooking would be spoiled. But it’s not merely because his mother was scared to go hungry, but more because of what this food symbolized—sharing and living in a community.
“How you approach food tells me how who you are and how you relate with your friends, you neighbors and your community,” he said. Growing up, Assad has learned that food needed to be shared as this will strengthen ties with the local community. He recalled his father who often encourage Assad and his siblings to share their food with other community members. He recalled his mother who often bakes cake and offers them to their Tausug neighbors, hence diffusing a possible ethic tension between Maranao and Tausug and offered concrete proof that food can, indeed, be used in peacemaking.
But, most of all, Assad, who relished cooking Maranao dishes, considers food as a way to find inner peace. Because while others meditate, get a massage or perhaps resort to retail therapy to calm inner turmoil, Assad said he’d rather retreat to the kitchen, get his homemade palapa—a staple Maranao condiment made of shallots, chilies, ginger and salt—and whip out one of the dishes he learned from his grandmother.
“Food is very comforting. Preparing it is very peaceful,” he said.
Assad may just be talking about personal peace. In the context of Marawi siege, we may equate peace with the end of war. But peace is defined in so many ways, the same thing that there’s so many ways toward peacemaking.
And as we approach the season of peace (and feast!), I would like to remember what Good Food’s Charlene Tan said on how she personally defines peace.
Peace, she said, is about the sense of rightness, that all shall be well. I will expound on this idea further by saying that peace is about knowing and feeling that no matter how difficult your circumstances are, you are in a right path, that you are being guided by a power higher than yourself.
May you all be well and may we all have that inner peace not only this Christmas season but in the months to come. Merry Christmas!
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Prime Sarmiento is a longtime business journalist who specializes in food, agribusiness and commodities-trade reporting. Her stories have been published in both local and international publications, including Nikkei Asian Review, China Daily, Science and Development Network and Dow Jones Newswires.
Comments and ideas are welcome at prime.sarmiento@gmail.com.