In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 43 million people will suffer from hunger in 2022, according to the FAO. This means that they went days without eating to the point of suffering illness or physical discomfort from lack of food.
But the problem does not have to do only with the population that suffers from extreme hunger. Also with those who are in a situation of food insecurity: people who have access to food, but are forced to reduce it in quantity or quality and, consequently, skip meals and do not have healthy diets.
In the region, many people have lost their ability to access food in the last decade. Between 2014 and 2016, 27% of the region’s population experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. Already in 2020 and 2021, that figure increased to 39% and 40%, respectively. Although in 2022, the percentage decreased to 37.5%, the region is still only below Africa (60.9%) and above the global average (30%), according to the most recent United Nations report on world food security.
Less food on the table or the majority consumption of unhealthy foods also means that Latin America and the Caribbean has a double burden of malnutrition: on the one hand, malnutrition and, on the other side of the coin, overweight. and obesity, which affects up to 62.5% of the regional population, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
More than 133 million Latin Americans cannot afford a healthy diet. It is a challenge to reduce this figure taking into account that the region has the highest costs for a daily intake of nutritious foods: 4.08 dollars per day per person, while the world average is 3.66 dollars, highlights the FAO.
“The consequences of food insecurity are far-reaching, impacting not only health, but also general well-being. “Inadequate access to nutritious food undermines people’s ability to fully participate in economic and social activities, thereby perpetuating cycles of poverty and marginalization.”, says Diego Arias, practice manager in the Agriculture and Food area of the World Bank for the region.
Four dimensions to address food security
To address food insecurity effectively, the expert explains, it is crucial to recognize its multifaceted nature and address it with a comprehensive approach from four main dimensions:
- The physical availability of food: that there is sufficient production and supply.
- Economic and physical access to food, which relates to policies focused on income, expenditures, markets and prices to ensure that households can obtain food.
- The use of food: adequate use of nutrients, dietary diversity and equitable distribution within the home.
- The stability over time of the three previous dimensions so that there is continuous access to food, even if crises such as extreme climate phenomena, political instability and other economic factors occur.
The food challenges for the region are great in a context of climate change, high production costs, increased food prices, inadequate infrastructure, among other obstacles.
In Latin America’s role as a food producer (the region is the world’s main food exporter) and in its capacity to provide ecosystem services (such as regulation of the water cycle, carbon sequestration, among others) there are also opportunities to the region and for the world. One of the ways to take advantage of these opportunities to target food security is to transform the region’s food systems to make them more resilient and align them with more sustainable natural resource practices.
“The Latin American and Caribbean region has the potential to overcome challenges and transform its food system. However, this requires decisive action by each country to reorient its agricultural policies and increase collaborative action between governments, the private sector, international organizations and civil society to guarantee that all inhabitants have access to adequate and nutritious food, both in the present as well as the future,” emphasizes Arias.
To promote food security, it is key to understand that approaching solutions requires a combination of areas such as agriculture, social protection, health, and availability of water and sanitation.
“The World Bank supports countries to provide expertise, strategic advice and essential financial resources to transform food systems, thereby reducing poverty and promoting development that is green, resilient and inclusive. “Our support focuses on addressing food insecurity comprehensively, implementing immediate interventions such as the expansion of social protection programs, as well as long-term projects that encourage increased agricultural productivity and the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices,” explains Arias.
In the short and long term
In the short term, a resilient agriculture project is being carried out in Haiti to increase production with climate-smart practices and improve access to nutritious food. The community participates intensively in the workforce, there are temporary employment and capacity-building programs. Together with the World Food Programme, local food is purchased to provide meals for 100,000 students. Another short-term example is that of Dominica, where an agriculture and climate resilience project was approved to quickly mobilize the funds necessary to reduce food insecurity.
In the medium and long term, a good practice is the series of rural competitiveness projects in Honduras that, in the first phase, managed to get more than 12,000 small producers, 27% of which are women, to establish alliances to obtain more than 33 million of dollars in financing and that their sales increased by more than 25%. A second phase of the project, currently underway, has benefited almost 7,000 small farmers, 32% of whom are women; 15% are young people and 10% belong to indigenous communities, and it has directly and indirectly generated 8,880 jobs.
In Bolivia, where 20% of the population suffers from malnutrition and 25% suffers from obesity, the World Bank supports an innovation project to increase food security, market access and the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices for almost 128,000 producers. Approximately 1,300 rural organizations will access fixed capital and technical assistance to increase their production, put more food into local markets and adapt to climate change.
These are just four examples among 50 projects related to food security (in the areas of agriculture and food production, social protection, health, and water and sanitation) that the World Bank is supporting in 14 countries in the region with more than 5 billion of dollars invested. Another 11 projects are being prepared to help feed Latin Americans in the future.
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