I recently reminded workers on my small farm that we may need to grow more food — not later, but now. More sweet potatoes and cassava. More plantains and table bananas. Greater care for our coconut trees. And a renewed commitment to natural farming that is less dependent on costly, oil-based inputs. The war in the Middle East feels distant, but its effects are already felt in the Philippines.
We see it when jeepney fares rise, when rice prices inch upward, when a weekly budget no longer stretches like it used to.
This is how modern wars travel: not only through missiles and headlines, but also through supply chains, fuel prices, and food systems. The conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the United States is reshaping the global economy. For countries like the Philippines, it raises a more troubling possibility: not just inflation, but hunger.
At the center of this crisis is oil. The Middle East remains a critical artery of global energy supply. When tensions rise or shipping is disrupted, prices surge. For a country that imports nearly all its oil, the impact is immediate.
But oil is not only about transport. It is embedded in how food is grown and delivered. Farmers rely on fuel for irrigation and machinery. Fertilizers — many produced or shipped from the same region— become more expensive. Food then costs more to produce, move, and ultimately buy.
This is how an energy crisis becomes a food crisis.
Less visible, but equally decisive, is what happens to fertilizers. Modern agriculture rests on a quiet chemical process — the Haber–Bosch method, which converts natural gas into ammonia, and ammonia into the nutrients that sustain crops. In effect, it transforms energy into food. Much of this production is concentrated in countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. When conflict unsettles this region, fertilizer costs rise, farmers use less, and harvests decline. By the time the impact reaches the market, it no longer looks like geopolitics. It looks like higher prices and smaller portions.
The burden is uneven. The Global South bears the heaviest cost — countries dependent on imported fuel and farm inputs, with limited safety nets. For millions, there is little cushion between stability and deprivation.
In the Philippines, the risks are clear. Among Southeast Asian nations, the Philippines is one of the most exposed to oil shocks — highly dependent on imports, with limited buffers, and with a food system where rising energy costs quickly translate into higher food prices. Even when local rice production holds, the broader food system remains vulnerable. Transport costs rise with fuel prices. Fertilizer becomes less accessible. Market prices adjust quickly, but wages do not. Food remains available, but increasingly unaffordable.
Those most affected are also the least protected. Urban poor families, who rely entirely on purchased food, feel the strain first. Small farmers face rising input costs without guaranteed income. Informal workers see earnings eroded by inflation. Women stretch shrinking budgets. Children bear the longest-lasting consequences.
The country is not starting from a position of strength. Data from the Food and Nutrition Research Institute and the United Nations Children’s Fund show that about 23.6 percent of children younger than age 5 are stunted while roughly 5 to 6 percent suffer from wasting, affecting more than half a million children. In poorer regions such as the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), as many as one in two children are malnourished. These figures reflect an existing vulnerability, one that rising food prices can quickly deepen.
What begins as economic strain can become a public health crisis. As food prices rise, families do not simply eat less; they eat differently. Cheaper, less nutritious food replaces balanced meals. Protein is reduced. Fresh vegetables become occasional. For children, even short periods of inadequate nutrition can impair growth, weaken immunity, and affect cognitive development. Over time, this translates into higher rates of stunting and wasting — outcomes that shape both individual futures and national development.
For small farmers, the lesson is immediate. Dependence on imported inputs carries risks that become visible in times of crisis. There is quiet resilience in crops that have long sustained Filipino communities — root crops, bananas, coconuts, and various vegetables — grown through organic or natural methods. These are not simply traditional practices; they are practical responses to a more uncertain world.
In more vulnerable regions, including parts of Mindanao and the BARMM, these pressures are magnified. Poverty, fragile infrastructure, and climate risks intersect, making communities more exposed to shocks that originate far beyond their borders.
What, then, can be done?
In the short term, governments can cushion the impact through targeted support: cash transfers, food reserves, and careful regulation of prices and supply. But these are temporary measures.
The deeper response lies in reducing vulnerability itself.
Energy diversification is one path forward. Investments in renewable sources can lessen dependence on imported oil. Strengthening local agriculture is another: improving productivity, supporting farmers, and building more resilient food systems.
Equally important is strengthening social protection. Hunger is not only a failure of supply, but also of access. Across policy circles, there is growing recognition that today’s wars are no longer confined to battlefields. They are transmitted through energy, food, and the fragile systems that sustain everyday life.
The bombs fall in one region; the hunger spreads across continents. For the Philippines, this moment is both warning and opportunity. Resilience cannot be improvised in a crisis. It must be built in advance through wiser energy choices, stronger food systems, and more inclusive policies.
In the end, the true cost of distant wars is counted not in victories or losses, but in how many families must stretch their food, and how many children go to bed hungry in places no one is bombing.