Food and policy

For this ambitious venture, it has partnered with the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca), an organ of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (Seameo). The University of the Philippines UP Los Baños and Commission on Higher Education, through Commissioner Lilian de las Llagas, joined hands with the university to make this meeting possible and to bring this project to fruition.

The conference title sounds grand — and convoluted — but what it really takes up are the pressing issues of our time with which the man in the street, not only in Southeast Asian countries but throughout the world, is profoundly concerned. It ultimately has to do with growling stomachs, malnourished children, poor harvests, disturbingly unpredictable weather patterns, and, more dangerously, rising tempers and the rumblings of discontent. It is a gathering of researchers because notwithstanding the astuteness of Madame Sen. Cynthia Villar (“and her disdain for all the attention given research (“research unless we go for band-aids that conceal more than they cure, multi-dimensional problems like food call for the collaboration of scientists of different stripes. So, papers will be read, a book of abstracts will be distributed and discussion groups will treat issues singly and, I hope, with an abundance of thoughtfulness.

I have thumbed through the book of abstracts. The papers fall under two key headings: Food and economic security on the one hand and environmental sustainability on the other. “Security” in “economic security” cannot mean only having ample produce to feed a burgeoning, hungrier population. It really has to do with security — as national secuit — and security in an ontological sense: that sense that makes this world cosmos, rather than chaos, that makes it home, not adversary, of humankind. Perhaps, environmental “sustainability” is too optimistic a phrase, because while many scientists assure us that we can still salvage the situation from utter catastrophe, some think that we are way past the tipping point. Given the alarming rates at which the polar caps are melting and disappearing, and Greenland, starting to be really green and losing its ice

more aggressive than just “sustaining” is the summons of the hour.

Ultimately, whatever scientists may say from October 16 to 17 at this international gathering held in the far north of the Philippines — Tuguegarao, a city that has

- gard to meteorologically induced disasters — must be shaped into policy. Policy is the intermediate

- ings of fact) and law. It is broader than law. It may not have the binding force of law, but it has the amplitude that law does not

- utes do not possess. And policy formulation not only by nations but also by local governments should be the desirable outcome of this gathering. After all, that is what characterizes us as humans in modernity: Not only do we act and bring about change, we fall victim to change. We simultaneously observe, note, record and discuss what has come to pass. It is this

plotting of future action. Policy is the key to a future we bring about, not one to which we fall prey.