ALPFA CS 132 Project Page

Background

Is there going to be enough food to feed all Filipinos?

In December 2023, the number of Filipino families that experienced hunger was at 12.6%. That's about 325,632 families going hungry, not being able to eat at least once in the past three months. So that begs the question, how are we coping up as a country food-wise? With a steadily increasing population currently at 119 million, the Philippines grows at an average pace of 1,700,000 people each year. With the number of Filipinos growing, is there going to be enough food to be put on everyone's tables?

Our project aims to shed some light on these alarming concerns. By focusing primarily on the growth of internal food production of the country, we can gain some insight on the relationship between the Philippines' growing population and the overall sustainability of the country food wise. Moreover, our project also includes supplements for our findings with data related to food imports, as well as annual hunger indexes to help concretely evaluate the country’s performance in both the industrial sector and the health sector as well.

Conclusively, we also aim to provide a bold prediction: If the Phillipines, with our current growth in food production, will ever (or continue to) be able to keep up with its growing population.

Overview

This leads us to ask,

Research Question #1

Is the Philippines' food industry production keeping up with its population growth?

Hypothesis #1

The population growth significantly outpaces the rate of food production.

Research Question #2

Will the country eventually experience a sustainable relationship between the country's population growth and food production?

Hypothesis #2

The country’s food production will eventually reach a point where its growth is equal to / or greater than the population growth

Null Hypothesis

The rate of food production have no association with the population growth.

Plan of Action

To use data science to assess and evaluate the Philippines' Performance in terms of Internal Food Production/Food Importation vs Population Growth Ratio

Data

Data Gathering Process

In the process of finding relevant datasets, the team went to different libraries within UP Diliman. Ultimately, we were able to find most assistance from the School of Economics Library. After signing necessary paperwork, the library staff gave us access to several websites than we can use. Among the provided websites, we ended up using CDMNext, the next generation of CEIC Data manager, which allows us to access CEIC databases which compiled datasets from global databses. This is where we found our dataset regarding the industry production index, specifically in food products, and food imports, which were sourced from the Philippine Statistics Authority. However, the food imports dataset only contained data from 2021 to 2023. To fill in the missing years, we referred to data from the World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) website. We found the rest of the datasets through credible databases and government websites such as the Philippine Statistics Authority, as well as Macrotrends which is sourced from the United Nations' statistical records. The hunger percentage dataset was also found in macrotrends.net, sourcing from World Bank.

Food Production

Volume of food produced by the food industry during 2001-2023 from Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)

Population

Population Growth during 2000-2023 from the United Nations

Hunger Index

Population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption during 2001-2020 from World Bank

See Data

Data Analysis

Initial Exploratory Data Analaysis

Food Production vs PopulationWe performed a Pearson Correlation test to determine if the trends are correlated. The test resulted in a coefficient r = 0.99 and p-value < 0.0001, implying a strong positive correlation; wherein we can observe that both food production and population show a positive trend. Because of this, we reject the null hypothesis. Moreover, we can observe that the slope of the trend for food production is significantly steeper than the population trend, which implies that the rate of food production growth outpaces population growth. Thus we can speculate that our second hypothesis, wherein the country’s food production will eventually reach a point where its growth is equal to / or greater than the population growth, might eventually occur.

Food Production vs Hunger IndexWe once again performed a Pearson Correlation test to determine if there is a correlation between the trends. The test resulted in a coefficient r = -0.92 and p-value < 0.0001, implying a strong negative correlation. To confirm this, we can observe that there is a general positive trend in food production growth and a corresponding negative trend for hunger growth. Thus, we reject our null hypothesis. Observe that around the year 2002, there has been a small peak in food production. With this, we can also see that hunger growth starts to decline around the same time. Moreover, we can see around 2011 the slight dip in food production, which corresponds to the peak in the same year. We can see a more significant observation of this correlation from years 2015 to 2019.

Population vs Hunger IndexAs additional support to help better visualize the ongoing trend of hunger within the country, this graph shows the number of hungry Filipinos in relation to the overall population of that year. Thus, we can see that as the population increases over time, hunger stays well below 20% of the general population. We can also notice that within the latest years, hunger has been taking up a lesser ration compared to the earlier years. However, we should recognize that our data is still plotted within the millions. Thus, although we can see a decrease in hunger over the years, it can be reasonably argued that until this number is closer to zero, the country still needs to do more to make this less.

Data Interpretation

Our study reveals a big responsibility for the future of our country: to keep up the momentum we have for our food production with our consistently growing population. The moment we ever falter or lag behind in regards to our growth, we might face another thousand hungry within that period.

However, we are within reach of a better future. If we were to sustain the pace of food production growth annually, then following the trend we see in our data, it seems that we will eventually be able to reach a sustainable relationship with the growing population. This would mean that since our food production is growing at a faster and steeper rate than the population, in theory, the number of hungry people grows less annually as well. Thus, at some point in the future, we might see our hunger rate at a minimal level.

Take note that this prediction is entirely based on the sole factor of food production. We need to remember that hunger, although it shows a causal relationship between food production in our data, is also affected by numerous other things as well (ex. access to these foods, the economy and poverty, food distribution, pricing, inflation, etc.). As such, our study is limited to only observing food production growth and population growth. This also does not include food imports or food costs over the years, and due to data constraints, our hunger index only goes as far as evaluating up to the year 2021. Despite these limitations, we firmly believe that food production growth still plays a massive role in helping to achieve a sustainable relationship between our hunger rate and our population.

Conclusion & Call to Action

Although food production keeps up with population growth, active steps should be taken to ensure that this trend is maintained. First, innovations in food production must be explored and developed to maximize the efficiency of production procedures and outputs. Investing in agricultural research and technology will improve farming practices and may significantly enhance productivity. Second, food waste must be reduced to ensure that more food reaches everyone, especially those who are most in need. This could be done through

better food storage and transportation and by raising awareness about food waste. Lastly, the government must prioritize policies that support sustainable agriculture, which may also support local farmers instead of relying on feeding programs and food imports. With these policies, food costs can also be reduced to ensure that food is financially more accessible to those in need.

Team

Spring

Alec Lopez

Data Analyst

A 2nd Year BS Computer Science student from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Interested in web development, game development, and musical performance and production. He aims to combine both his interests in game development and music production to create games where players can be immersed in the music.

Paolo Lapira

Web Designer

A 2nd Year BS Computer Science student from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Has passions in the field of Web Design, Data Science, Photography, and Culinary. His passion is to achieve his goals in the most enjoyable way possible. He strives to spread happiness and laughter in the most nonchalant way possible.

Fahad Decampong