16/10/2026
Today is World Food Day led globally by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Among the families ICM serves, 38 percent are food insecure. Thirteen percent severely so. Average income is $0.50 per person per day.
In Bacolod, a scrap-filled corner of a rice field now grows eggplant, cucumber, lettuce, red chili, okra, water spinach, bottle gourd, herbs and tomatoes.
Nilo is 70, a rice farmer, and leads the Bakahan Savings Group - formed in 2024 after the members completed ICM’s Transform program. Like most farmers in their area, they work seasonally, which means months without steady income.
Their innovation was an arrangement, built to outlast the season. They secured permission from the landowner for the idle land, repurposed rice husks from the local mill as organic fertilizer, and divided the work by crop, Nilo on eggplants and cucumbers, others on composting and maintenance.
At harvest, the produce is sold at prices members can afford, and the income is pooled into their savings group. More households are eating vegetables. When neighbors cannot afford to buy, Nilo shares what he can.
“I’ve worked on farms for years, but I never imagined I could grow a garden of my own and help our community,” Nilo shares.
Bakahan is one of 4,418 savings groups across ICM’s communities in the Philippines. On a day the world counts the hungry, that is 177,726 people counting what they have saved - US$7 million in all.
The Sustainable Development Goals call for access to sufficient food all year round, and for small-scale producers to have secure access to land, knowledge and the means to grow. Bakahan had the farming skills before ICM arrived. What they gained was access - to a small but useful land, to training, and to each other.
