Member profile
Dr. Blesilda Calub
Organization:
University of the Philippines Los Banos, Agricultural Systems Institute
Country:
Philippines
Field(s) of expertise:
I am working on:
helping address stunting and wasting among school children due to undernutrition resulting largely in low academic performance. We promote the integration of sustainable organic agriculture in school and home/family gardens to encourage localized community-based food security with the support of parents, local government units, organizations and academic institutions
Dr. Blesilda Calub
Dear Organizers,
Please find our contribution to the call for submission of the Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition.
Organic agriculture is one of the more sustainable farming systems that promote biodiverse ecological systems, soil health, fairness and social justice, care and precautionary use of synthetic inputs. Organic agriculture also contributes to local food security and nutrition, especially in rural communities.
Transforming the implementation of the government's program on school gardens in tandem with school-based feeding and parents’ home gardens helped improve the nutritional status of undernourished school children and improved their academic performance. The engagement of parents in their children's nutrition and the support of local government units and other stakeholders by co-shared funds and enabling policies contributed to higher vegetable consumption among families that helped ensure local food security and nutrition.
School gardens are also excellent venues for teaching organic agriculture and related topics on sustainable and regenerative farming, agrobiodiversity conservation, soil nutrient management, proper biodegradable waste management through composting and climate resilience.
For more long-term sustainable food security and nutrition of future generations, it is important to invest in human resource capacity development at the elementary, secondary and tertiary levels for both students and teachers. It is also important to have continuing discussions and learning opportunities among the multi-sectoral stakeholders.
In the transformation process, we need not overhaul the existing system. Instead, we built upon the strengths while identifying the gaps and cracks. For these, we started with doable and manageable interventions on the ground and with a foresight to scale up through collaboration, participatory development approaches and systems thinking.