Argentina is Latin American country where access to food worsened the most since 2014

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Since 2014, Argentina was the country in Latin America and the Caribbean where the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity advanced the most, according to an international report with data from the nations with available information.

The data is from the report “Regional Overview of Food and Regional Security” conducted by five agencies of the United Nations (UN): the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the World Food Program (WFP for its acronym in English).

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“Between the periods 2014-2016 and 2018-2020, all countries with available information showed an increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. In Argentina, it increased by 16.6 percentage points, in Ecuador by 12 percentage points, and in Peru by 10.6 percentage points,” the report states.

“In Chile and Guatemala, it rose by seven percentage points, while in Brazil and El Salvador, it increased by five percentage points,” the report added.

Moderate food insecurity refers to a situation where a person’s ability to obtain food is subject to certain uncertainties. Severe food insecurity is when a person has run out of food, is hungry, or has not eaten for days. They have been forced to reduce, sometimes over a year, the quality and quantity of the food they consume due to lack of money or other resources.

In the case of moderate or severe food insecurity, Argentina had 19.2% of the population affected by this index in 2014/2016 and worsened to 35.8% in 2018/2020.

Although Argentina is the country where the index advanced the most, it is not the one that leads when looking at the overall picture. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Guatemala leads with 49.7%, followed by Peru with 47.8%, El Salvador with 47.1%, Honduras with 45.6%, and Argentina with 35.8%.

SCENARIO

“Forty-one percent of the region’s population suffers from moderate or severe food insecurity, which translates into 267 million people whose human right to food is affected,” the report states about the general situation.

While Argentina appears as the country where the index deteriorated the most when comparing results since 2014 when the cut is made from the periods 2017-2019, and 2018-2020 (in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic), “Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador experienced the largest increases in moderate or severe food insecurity.”

“In all three countries, prevalence grew by more than four percentage points. In Ecuador, it increased by 3.9 percentage points, in Mexico by 3.5 percentage points, and in Brazil and Peru by 2.9 percentage points,” he said.

In this regard, making the comparison from 2017, the current 35.8% of the Argentine population affected by the index was also already 35.8% at that time.

The work also shows that severe food insecurity, in the last five years in Argentina, has more than doubled, rising from 2.6 to 5.7 million people.