Food stamps for poor Pinoys? It’s about time

The first Food Stamp Program in the world was implemented in 1939 under the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the depth of the Great Depression, which caused unemployment, homelessness, and starvation. At that time, American farmers were growing surplus produce, but unemployed and impoverished people were unable to afford to buy it. The concept of food stamps was intended partially to help the poor, but just as equally to boost the economy and pay farmers a fair price for their labors as part of the New Deal.

Since then, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been mandated to strengthen food security and reduce hunger by increasing access to food for low-income Americans.

The agency’s nutrition assistance programs now include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs; the Child and Adult Care Food Program; Food Assistance for Disaster Relief; the Emergency Food Assistance Program; the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations; and food distribution programs such as the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which seeks to improve the health of low-income persons at least 60 years of age.

SNAP, formerly called the Food Stamp Program, is the nation’s largest nutrition assistance program and a key automatic stabilizer of family well being during economic downturns. According to the USDA, over 42 million Americans—around 13 percent of the population—were participating in the food stamp program as of November 2022. In 2021, the total cost of the US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was around $113.74 billion.

In the Philippines, the Department of Social Welfare and Development is gearing up to launch the country’s own food stamp program. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide around $3 million grant to the DSWD to initially fund the agency’s “Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program,” which will start in the second half of the year. DSWD estimates it will eventually need to secure P40 billion from taxes and multilateral organizations for the full rollout of the program. (Read, “DSWD to launch food stamp program in select area,” in the Businessmirror, May 23, 2023).

DSWD Secretary Rexlon “Rex” T. Gatchalian said the initiative is part of the efforts of the Inter-agency Task Force on Zero Hunger to reduce incidents of involuntary hunger in the country. The latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey said around 2.7 million Filipino families experienced hunger during the first quarter of 2023.

“The program is anchored to the Philippine Development Agenda 2023-2028 of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in addressing both hunger and poverty, and more particularly with alleviating the incidence of involuntary hunger among the Filipino families belonging to the lowest bracket income as identified in the recent DSWD Listahanan 3,” Gatchalian said. The DSWD’S Listahan 3 includes 1 million households, which do not earn over P8,000 per month and belong to the “food-poor” criteria of the Philippine Statistics Authority.

DSWD is currently designing the mechanism to ensure the new program will be properly implemented in priority areas from July until the end of the year. “There are working models out there that we can copy, tweak a little so that we can adapt it to the terrain of the Philippines,” Gatchalian said, adding that Mongolia, Indonesia, and Vietnam have successfully implemented their respective food stamp programs.

The pilot program will cover 3,000 family beneficiaries, which will each receive tap cards that they can use to buy selected food items worth P3,000 from Dswd-accredited local retailers, which may include Kadiwa ng Pangulo outlets as well as MSME grocery stores.

If there’s a government program that needs priority funding, the DSWD’S food stamp program should be on top of the list. Kudos to the Marcos administration for implementing this program, which ensures food security for the less fortunate Filipino families and helps improve the self-esteem of poor Pinoys by reducing coping strategies such as being forced to borrow money from loan sharks to pay for food.