MANILA, Philippines – Is sustainable, fair, and clean food for all even possible for the Philippines?

The question has been circling the minds and hearts of chefs, farmers, entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprise (SME) owners, advocates, and nongovernment organizations for years — and it has only grown louder and more urgent. Rising inflation has been hitting households just as hard as our farmers, who struggle for a steady income. Climate change brings floods and typhoons, and consumers are more conscious about health and where their food is coming from.

The stakes are high. But the spirit of the Filipino community soars higher.

From November 18 to 23, Bacolod City — the emerging slow food capital of the Philippines — offered a vivid, hopeful answer. For five days, the City of Smiles became a beacon of light for both consumer and producer, and a delicious avenue of storytelling through food and delicacies from all over the archipelago.

This was Bacolod’s first Terra Madre Asia Pacific Festival — the biggest sustainable gastronomy event in APAC and the first Terra Madre held outside Turin, Italy. The essence of slow food was the binding agent of everything that transpired over those five days.

It was a glimpse of what the future could look like. For five days, General Lacson Street and the Capitol Lagoon Park transformed into a bustling hub of flavors: budbud salt from Miagao from a bamboo stalk; tanigue kinilaw chopped fresh with Sagay vinegar; charcoal-grilled eel from Bago City; woven baskets of coffee and cacao from Mindanao; organic produce from Negros farmers; and trays of diwal (razor clams) steaming in butter and garlic.

Chefs, farmers, artisans, tourists, and locals converged across the lagoon, running to Taste Workshops, lining up for cooking demos, and listening to insights and tips from regional culinary figures alongside Filipino chefs from Manila’s Michelin-starred restaurants.

Slow Food rejects the very grain of fast food. Simply put, slow food is the right to good, clean, and fair food for all. It’s about transparency: who made it, where it was grown, how it was harvested, and what’s in it. Slow Food Negros advocates get to know farmers on the island and put them on a pedestal; farmers are the real stars here. The movement becomes a platform for farmers to showcase the fruits of their labor and then become leaders in their own communities.

To the Terra Madre team and its thousands of attendees, the event was a success: sold-out booths, a greater awareness and appreciation of what the Philippines has to offer, and agri-entrepreneurs and SMEs connecting with chefs, local governments, and other businesses. The communal energy was palpable, and the pride was evident.

But one event is not enough to sustain the mission. At the end of the festivities, what’s next? How do we move this forward? How do we ensure a fair, sustainable, and clean gastronomy for all?

First, it’s about understanding — and never forgetting — where we came from.

Memories as our foundation

During Terra Madre, Erwan Heussaff emphasized the importance of keeping our traditions alive through online education.

The modern-day food storyteller, content creator, and founder of FEATR creates short and long films that spotlight regional produce from across the Philippines. He won the 2023 James Beard Media Award for social media, a milestone that helped put global attention on Filipino food.

“We come from a particular past, and moving to the Philippines is a way to understand our story better — where we came from, how the food shaped our identity, and how our identity shaped the food that we eat,” he said.

FEATR zooms in on heirloom ingredients, people, and heritage recipes that are at risk of being forgotten — and with them, parts of our identity. Heussaff said it was affecting farm biodiversity, so FEATR took on the urgent responsibility to communicate this through video, the medium he believes is the best to reach the latest generation.

“Education is a great equalizer,” he said. The internet becomes a portal to tell stories. Through his videos, he creates a “marketing flywheel”: tell the story, build awareness, and organically bring in demand.

Awareness is the key to demand

We see it on TikTok and Instagram: a viral review or reel makes a restaurant or product the next must-try. Why not use the same energy for local produce? Heussaff said restaurant owners, chefs, and entrepreneurs play the role of communicators — talking about stories, building traction for artisans, and, while doing so, forcing the hand to provide better logistics and cleaner access so food can circulate better around the country and the world.

Johanne Siy, the Dagupan-born chef who helms Lolla in Singapore, was named Asia’s Best Female Chef (2023) by the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy. Her cuisine is produce-driven and mindful of the culinary traditions she grew up with — a mix of European fine dining and Mediterranean influences.

Based in Singapore for 20 years, she said living between contexts opened her eyes. Singapore imports 90% of its food, and the Philippines is actually very lucky to be reliant on agriculture for food security. “I’m in a position to magnify the voices of the local heroes here and introduce that part of our culture to the rest of the world,” she said.

Michelin-starred Toyo Eatery’s Chef Jordy Navarra has won the Gin Mare Art of Hospitality Award (2025) and the Flor de Caña Sustainable Restaurant Award (2023). According to Asia’s 50 Best, Toyo “prioritizes Filipino produce and people, fostering long-term relationships with local farmers and artisans.” The academy noted that while many equate sustainability with the environment alone, Toyo prioritizes the sustainability of people and cultural heritage.

For Navarra, traveling made him more aware of what he wanted to do for Toyo: “Traveling the world, trying to learn from different cultures, basically focused on learning how to cook in the technical aspect. While on that journey, I realized this isn’t the food I need — it’s the food I grew up eating.”

Dining isn’t about the fanfare, the Instagram hits, the upscale ambiance, or the prices. It all boils down to the ingredients.

“The more you learn how to cook, the more you realize you’re basically a prisoner to whatever product you have,” he said.

Ingredients as the backbone

Sourcing locally isn’t always easy, with logistical issues and inconsistent supply chains. “But the cool part after that is learning and discovering more through the years,” Navarra said. It has been a humbling journey for him as a chef so far.

“What I learned is I can’t dictate to the producer the specs of how I want to cook, but I should accept what the world gives us,” he said.

“Accept the best of what the world can give us. As chefs, we try and use that and represent that in the best way we can.”

“Now, we are very proud of the industry that we have,” he added. “The majority of restaurants have some form of Philippine-based or locally based approach. Our whole scene came from trying to work with the product we have and adjust our approach.”

But challenges remain. Heussaff described the basic struggle: finding a farmer’s contact, discovering whether they even have signal, relying on Facebook Messenger, booking a bus, and going two hours north of Manila to pick up produce. Many low-income and rural communities lack reliable Internet access.

But community is the best ingredient. Navarra built a team dedicated to foraging and procurement — “an army of people” — to take on the journey of sourcing.

“It’s getting better because one trip can help five restaurants,” he said. Chefs share the product, restaurants come together. Siy stressed the importance of building relationships, too: farmers must “feel good” about their work.

“I can just reach out to anyone I see and build a personal relationship with that farmer. Then I enrolled him in the cycle of the restaurant, so that we work together to achieve menu planning and supply scheduling,” Siy said. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

We must convince farmers that what they grow is special — that it’s not a commodity, Heussaff said. It leads to investment, better infrastructure, cleaner processes, and wider access.

“We want them to know it’s highly prized and highly looked for. And once you’re able to build that interest and prove that interest to that certain community, then you start community building,” he added. It’s a chain reaction; when everyone around that community starts believing in that product, more time and skills are invested [in] making it. It’s not so much about the revenue but about empowering these farmers and artisans to take pride in what they create.

Bringing Philippine pride abroad matters more than we think. Heussaff once saw asin tultul from Guimaras displayed in a Seoul beef restaurant. “The chef didn’t know me. I didn’t know the chef. I asked where he got that. He goes, ‘Chef Jordy brought it to me.’ They proudly display it and still use it in tasting courses,” he shared.

Soft marketing drives interest not only back home but also overseas.

Planting seeds for the future

The conversation must not end here. Talking about it, asking the right questions, and starting the right discussions are the embers to keep the slow food fire alive.

“That’s maybe one of the nice things about social media,” Navarra said. Educational exchanges and events like Terra Madre are also a pivotal step forward in boosting attraction from domestic and international tourists.

Politics plays a role, too. Heussaff explained how making heritage products “sexy” can generate PR pressure that leads to policy change — the artisanal salt asin tibuok in Bohol became part of a tourism circuit and fed into legal amendments. “You need to give them a really strong story,” he said about our politicians. When the story is attractive enough, they listen.

But we don’t need to wait for the law to make a change, Heussaff said. To change the system, we must first change ourselves. If we rely on the system, we may end up waiting a while.

“Our role as influencers is to create as much noise as possible, hoping that someone is listening and someone is willing to take that for them,” he said.

The same goes for us consumers: we can do our part at home by using social media as a tool. If you see good, clean, and fair food in your community, share it.

“We all have that responsibility to make sure somebody knows,” Navarra said. One post can lead a huge audience to discover something local and unique.

We must remember that food isn’t just food. According to Heussaff, it can be seen as “very simplified fuel” that we need as humans, but it plays such an important part in the representation of our culture and country.

“We’re still very much kind of scratching…the surface of what Filipino biodiversity is and what we actually have to showcase,” Heussaff said — a reality that is fueling the passion of the country’s slow food community, chefs, and supporters.

To truly uplift our farmers, we must first cherish what is already ours. There is no reason to look outward, the three chefs echoed; we are abundant in resources and rich in flavors, traditions, and stories from every corner of the country.

And in time — through community work, social media, online advocates, and grassroots events like Terra Madre — slow food will grow beyond a movement. It will become a way of life and a natural way of eating, living, and celebrating what the Philippines already has to offer. – Rappler.com