WASHINGTON-
The climate, migration and inflation crises, as well as the war in Ukraine, affected access to agricultural products in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022 and led to an increase in food insecurity and extreme poverty in rural areas in the region, according to a report Joint special report released this Tuesday by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP).
According to ECLAC, agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean generates 18% of export value, 4% of the region’s gross domestic product and 14% of employment.
The international context, from the COVID-19 pandemic to wars, caused disruptions in the production and transport chains of goods, as well as fertilizer imports, which was reflected in an increase in food prices. The FAO Food Price Index reached its highest historical level in March 2022.
“Latin America and the Caribbean are facing production and marketing problems as well as price increases due to the war in Ukraine. The increase in international food and input prices affects both exporting countries and net food importers,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, at the presentation of the report.
The Russian Federation and Ukraine are among the world’s largest suppliers. Together they provided the world with 12% of the world’s traded calories. 30% of exports are wheat, 20% corn and 55% sunflower oil.
“Poor farmers in countries like Honduras have already had a hard time buying fertilizer, making it even harder, which will result in lower crop yields, especially for corn, which requires a significant amount of nitrogen Voice of America Manish Raizada, Professor in the Department of Agriculture at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Rising food prices increase the risk of food insecurity and, as a result, lower-income households suffer more from the effects of inflation. In Latin America, this phenomenon has accelerated faster than general inflation since mid-2020: in July 2022, considering an average of 10 countries in the region, food inflation reached 12.4% versus 8.4% of headline inflation, according to the report .
“This food inflation behavior exacerbates the risk of problems in access to healthy eating, food security and hunger, as lower-income households are hit harder,” Salazar-Xirinachs said.
The chronic impact of climate change was also mentioned in the report. “This year’s hurricane season affected 1.3 million people and virtually lost their livelihoods,” said Lola Castro, WFP regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to Castro, the intention to migrate also affects agricultural production. “In Central America, 4 in 10 households, or 43% in 2021, said they wanted to migrate permanently. It is clear that we absolutely need to invest more in the root causes to reverse this trend. Some of these are food and nutrition insecurity, the climate crisis and others.”
Data from the WFP shows that between September 2021 and 2022, arrivals of migrants from this hemisphere at the Mexico-US borders increased by 37%.
Estimated increase in extreme poverty and food insecurity in Latin America
In the region, inflation hitting the poorest sectors is 1.4 percentage points higher than that hitting the richest sectors. ECLAC estimates in the joint report that urban poverty will decrease slightly in 2022 due to the recovery in employment and income, while rural and extreme poverty will increase.
Extreme poverty in Latin America would reach 88 million people this year, 21.6 million of whom live in rural areas. Rural poverty is associated with self-reliant agriculture and it is where most of the food consumed in the region is produced, but it faces constraints on its productive development, poor access to land, capital, credit and technical support.
The FAO estimates that food insecurity in Latin America has increased more than the global average. In 2021, 8.6 percent of the region’s population, 56 million people, lived below the malnutrition threshold, i.e. suffered from hunger.
“Hunger increased by 30% in the region between 2019 and 2021. High dependency on imported fertilizers and volatility in food prices have negative and inevitable impacts on livelihoods, mainly of rural populations, and on access to healthy nutrition,” said Mario Lubetkin, FAO Deputy Director-General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the caribbean
In addition, severe food insecurity has doubled since 2015, from 7.5 to 14.2 in 2021. These are people who have gone a day or more without food.
The study points out that some immediate measures to combat the crisis should include activating social protection systems, expanding food programs, ensuring access to fertilizers, not restricting international food trade, negotiating price-cutting deals, and diversifying suppliers, among others.
“Multidimensional poverty is increasingly linked to food and nutrition insecurity, and where various crises contribute to deep structural inequalities, social protection systems, including school meals, play a fundamental role in reducing people’s vulnerability before, during and after crises,” Castro added .
From March to November 2022, they registered an increase in food insecurity in the 11 countries where the WFP works. “We had 8.7 million people in these countries in severe food insecurity and now in November we have closed it with 10.6 million people. This shows that inflation, the rise in the cost of the basic food basket, means that the poorest cannot obtain a minimum healthy diet on their current income.”
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