By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
kramkhalawan@caribmagplus.com
December 3, 2021
The current food situation in Caribbean and Latin America is being described as critical, atleast by the Food and Agriculture Organization attached to the United Nations. The findings were disclosed during the Regional Launch Overview of Food Security and Nutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021. And while the COVID 19 pandemic might have exacerbated it,
Julio Berdegué, FAO’s Regional Representative says it might have actually been on the rise in the last fifteen years, however standing now at 9.1 percent the highest it has been in the last 15 years, slightly below the world average of 9.9 percent. Berdegue says “We must say it loud and clear: Latin America and the Caribbean is facing a critical situation in terms of food security. There has been an almost 79 percent hike in the number of people living in hunger from 2014 to 2020. Although the pandemic has exacerbated the situation, hunger has been on the rise since 2014”. In just one year, the effects of COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the number of people living with hunger
increased by 13.8 million, reaching a total of 59.7 million people. Four out of every ten people in the region––267 million–– experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020, 60 million more than in 2019, an increase of 9 percentage points, the most pronounced rise in relation to other world regions.
In South America the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity increased by 20.5 percentage points between 2014 and 2020, while in Mesoamerica there was an increase of 7.3 percentage points during the same period. Even worse, in the region the prevalence of severe food insecurity –that is people who had run out of food or had gone a day or more without eating– reached 14 percent in 2020, a total of 92.8 million people, up from 47.6 million people in 2014. Food insecurity did not affect men and women equally: in 2020, 41.8 percent of women in the region experienced moderate or severe food security, compared with 32.2 percent of men. This disparity has been rising in the last 6 years and it increased sharply from 6.4 percent in 2019 to 9.6 percent in 2020. WFP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Lola Castro says “This report shows us the stark reality that we must face squarely to mitigate the situation for the most vulnerable population. By expanding national social protection systems, for example, governments can reach those most in need with assistance to help them get through these difficult times”.
While hunger is on the increase, a stark contrast in other figures recorded show an upward curve in the number of overweight children in the last 20 years.
The significant increases in obesity, show the prevalence between the year 2000 and 2016: a hike of 9.5 percentage points in the Caribbean, 8.2 percentage points and Mesoamerica, and 7.2 percentage points in South America.
A figure of 3.9 million children—7.5 percent of those under five years of age— were overweight, almost 2 percentage points above the world average. South America shows the highest prevalence of overweight in children (8.2 percent), followed by the Caribbean with 6.6 percent, and Mesoamerica with 6.3 percent.
Although Latin America and the Caribbean has shown important progress in reducing stunting in children, having reduced its prevalence from 18 percent to 11.3 percent in 20 years, between 2012 and 2020, the rate of decrease slowed down. The regional prevalence of wasting in children stands at 1.3 percent, significantly lower than the world average of 6.7 percent.
Dr. Carissa F Etienne, Director of PAHO/WHO, says “We continue losing the battle against all forms of malnutrition, and we are far from being able to guarantee healthy nutrition for the whole population. If we want to end hunger and provide wellbeing and healthy lives for people in the Americas, we have to transform our agricultural and food systems to provide healthy diets for everyone and to leave no one behind.”
The remedy to this, fixing deep vulnerabilities in regional food systems, making them more inclusive and sustainable and ensure they deliver wellbeing for the people that feed our societies.