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- PEOPLE’S FOOD POWER | Six ingenious ways local groups in Asia addressed hunger amid Covid-19*
PEOPLE’S FOOD POWER | Six ingenious ways local groups in Asia addressed hunger amid Covid-19*
Problems beget solutions. But when solutions fall short, or worse, become part of the problem and give rise to other problems, what then should be done?
In Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and the Philippines, governments enforced lockdowns and curfews to curb the spread of Covid-19. However, the solution triggered other life-and-death problems such as job losses and food scarcity that deepened inequality.
The deficient or flawed state response to Covid-19 prompted local groups in these countries to band together and address the worsening hunger and unemployment in their communities.
These groups proved that through collective action, a more equitable and easier access to food and nutrition was possible even in the most trying times.
Here’s how they did it.
1. In Bangladesh, they made healthy food within people's reach and linked producers and consumers
When people working in Bangladesh's capital city of Dhaka scrambled back to their villages in the nearby Manikganj District following a nationwide lockdown in March 2020, access to food and livelihood became their main problem.
Farmers could not sell and earn from their produce, while consumers didn’t know where to source their regular food supply because the markets in Dhaka where shut and transport was suspended.
A farmers' collective called Prakritik Krishi Bipanan Kendra, which runs an organic farm in Manikganj and was operating a natural food store in Dhaka before the pandemic, thought of a solution to both problems: set up a makeshift vegetable market near the village mosque in Manikganj to serve the local community and help farmers earn.
The idea was initially thumbed down by the local government for fear of breaching social distancing protocols to contain the spread of the coronavirus. But the farmers persisted. The market was able to operate after it was agreed that the police would enforce movement restrictions in the area.
Know more about Prakritik Krishi Bipanan Kendra here, here, and here.
2. In India, right to food campaign went hybrid, remained boundless despite Covid-19 restrictions
While street protests, sit-ins, and face-to-face dialogs dissipated when governments imposed lockdowns and physical distancing measures to slow the spread of Covid-19, it didn’t mean that activism thinned down, too.
In fact, in India, the campaign for right to food and nutrition morphed and multiplied into creative forms that sustained or even amplified pre-pandemic calls for the state to address the lingering crisis of hunger as an offshoot of a profit-centered economy that created wide disparities between the rich and the poor.
From storms of social media messages, digital press conferences, live streams, frequent uploads of explainer and solidarity videos, to the hybrid campaigns of offline pockets of collective action and online indignation, India’s right to food activists proved that strategies to get their message through and push for change remained boundless despite mobility restrictions.
An example of a hybrid campaign took place in June 2020 when activists, who were part of the Right to Food Campaign, India, observed a national day of mourning for citizens who had lost their lives and livelihoods amid the pandemic.
During the event, activists used popular online social media networks and cross-platform messaging services such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Instagram to drive home the point that it wasn’t Covid-19 that buried the people deeper into hunger and poverty, but the state’s unplanned and authoritarian way of imposing the lockdown.
Complementing the online campaign were small and quick but dramatic actions by people from the marginalized and vulnerable sectors, who suddenly lost their jobs due to the lockdown. Distanced from each other and wearing masks, they held placards and donned black bands on their hands to highlight their plight.
Last August, India’s right to food activists also participated in the launch of a virtual people’s congress called Janta Parliament that discussed pandemic-related policy issues, which Indian legislators failed to tackle when they went on recess in March.
During the Janta Parliament’s online sessions, activists pressed the government to address widespread hunger by distributing food items to everyone, including to those who didn’t have the required documents to acquire a ration card.
Know more about the campaigns of right to food activists In India amid Covid-19 here.
3. In Indonesia, communities turned food from commodity to commons
What is worse than being stuck in a hand-to-mouth existence despite working hard? Having no, food, no income, and no land to grow food on.
Indonesia's urban poor such as laborers, pedicab drivers, scavengers, small traders, sex workers, and street musicians, sunk deeper into such destitution when they were rendered jobless by the Indonesian government’s imposition of large-scale social restrictions to slow the spread of Covid-19.
With state support either inadequate or lacking, alleviating the hunger of those on the margins became a community effort.
In Indonesia’s most populated island of Java, residents of the regencies of Kulon Progo and Sleman in the region of Yogyakarta joined forces to feed the neediest urban dwellers by transforming food from a commodity that needs to be bought to a commons that should be shared.
Kulon Progo farmers tilling a 2,600-hectare land brought their surplus vegetables ̶ pumpkins, long beans, sweet cassava leaves, eggplants, chili, water spinach ̶ to Sleman residents, who in turn, produced nutritious ready-to-eat-meals in kitchens that were opened up as public cooking areas by a group called Solidaritas Pangan Jogja (Jogja Food Solidarity).
Other collectives in Yogyakarta such as Dapoer Bergerak (Motile Kitchen) and Sama-sama Makan (Together We Eat) did similar efforts by turning money and raw food donations into nutritious meals that need not be priced and purchased but eaten for the primary purpose of survival.
Know more about these groups here and here.
4. In Nepal, Dalits pushed to the wall fed themselves via community savings
Stuck at the bottom of Nepal’s caste system that made them extremely poor, marginalized, and discriminated against in economic and social opportunities, Dalits suffered further when the government imposed a nationwide lockdown in March 2020 to curtail the spread of the pandemic.
Thousands of Dalit migrant workers, who struggled to return from India became unemployed, many of them contracting Covid-19.
Even after they recovered from the coronavirus, the discrimination lingered or even worsened.
As Dalits, they are landless untouchables relegated to manual labor. They often work as tailors, blacksmiths, street sweepers, land tillers, and scavengers in exchange for rice, vegetables, hand-me-downs, and at times, paltry sums.
As Dalits, who either healed from Covid-19 or did not get infected with the virus but with a relative who did, they not only remained untouchables, they were also denied work, their only means to feed themselves and survive.
Government food relief packages that were either scarce or absent pushed them further to the wall. Despite the hopelessness, Dalit families in the small village of Kunni Kharka in Bethanchok town were still able to find a way to get by.
A cooperative that they established in 2005 was able to raise savings by collecting contributions from members every 15 days. The money, lent to Dalits at low interest rates, was used for cattle rearing and poultry farming.
This and the Dalits’ regular consumption of immunity-boosting drinks made of indigenous herbs and seeds helped Kunni Kharka residents shield themselves from hunger and the pandemic.
Know more about the Dalits of Kunni Kharka here.
5. In Pakistan, civil society, peasant and worker groups forged stronger ties to feed the poor
Community-based initiatives to address hunger were also launched in Pakistan in response to the unplanned Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020.
Amid the country’s floundering business sector and its starving people, the government chose to first resuscitate the former via a US$ 7.2-billion stimulus package that largely benefitted banks and industries.
Amid the state’s pro-business response to the pandemic crisis, civil society organizations and peasant and worker communities forged stronger ties and opened new ones that made it possible for them to help feed the poor and vulnerable groups in Pakistan.
Food was cooked in bulk and dry food rations were prepared and distributed to the neediest sectors by ordinary people and newly established associations during the lockdown.
Committees were likewise formed by trade unions and farmers’ organizations to assist those who had lost most of their household incomes and arranged food for these families.
The Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement was among the groups that participated in these efforts. Its Labour Relief Campaign helped feed hundreds of workers who lost their jobs in factories and were not paid salaries even for work that they had already accomplished.
Know more about the Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement and its campaign here.
6. In the Philippines, farmers, fishers, IPs occupied areas in pre-pandemic tourist hotspots for their food needs
Small food producers and land rights claimants in the Philippines responded to the Covid-19 challenge and the state’s deficient, if not defective response to the crisis through organizing alternative systems on one hand, and intensifying food production on the other, as a safety net against hunger in anticipation of a prolonged lockdown.
Female farmers also cultivated land belonging to others with permission, and many also commenced communal gardening.
In some areas that were commercial tourist hotspots before the pandemic, such as in the islands of Coron and Busuanga in Palawan province, and Sicogon Island in Carles, Iloilo indigenous people, farmers, and fishers initiated land occupations to challenge profit-oriented tourism with people-centered alternative tourism and non-market local production of organic food.
Solidarity markets also started to sprout as urban-based town hall markets were set up to make food accessible to consumers. Food-based producer-consumer relations likewise began to gain ground as town hall food markets were established in select areas, which provided farmers direct access to consumers and vice versa.
Know more about these Filipino farmers and fishers here and here.
*For more information about and related to this topic, read Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition - Asia Chapter’s Joint COVID-19 Monitoring Report on the Impacts of the Right to Food and Nutrition here.