Chef Highlights The Importance Of Local Agriculture In Filipino Cuisine And Culture

WHAT WE GROW, be it food crops or livestock, isn’t just what we eat--it’s also part of what makes up who we are. This is the message that chef Jam Melchor wants to send. The chef has been on a crusade to popularize Filipino food within the Philippines by setting it in the context of culture. “Other countries have a University of Gastronomy whereas here, it’s always an afterthought,” Melchor says in Tagalog. “We don’t give it importance.”

- Yvette Tan

FOOD AS PART OF CULTURE

The chef is a founder of the Philippine Culinary Heritage Movement (PCHM), former head of Slow Food Youth Network Philippines (SFYN), and a proponent, along with the Department of Agriculture, of Presidential Proclamation No. 469, proclaiming the month of April as National Filipino Food Month. “(Food) is part of our cultural identity. It’s important that people know where their food comes from, who made it, and where it was made,” he says. “The Slow Food Movement’s principle is food that is ‘good, clean, and fair,’ [meaning] traceability… the value of knowing where your food comes from.”

This is important because, as Melchor says, “In this age and time where you don’t know what’s fake and what isn’t, are we going to choose to be ignorant, even with our food?”

Culinary literacy is part of food security, something that an agricultural country shouldn’t be worrying about, and yet our present reality tells us otherwise. “We are a big agricultural country. It’s funny that we have to import products,” Melchor says.