Latin America food crisis: 11.8 million people affected in only five countries

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The GNAFC global network’s annual report, which is sponsored by several UN agencies, has estimated the seriousness of the situation in a small group of countries where reliable data was available. There is a concern in the case of Venezuela.

The Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC), in cooperation with several UN agencies, Wednesday, released its annual report on hunger in the world. The balance at the global level is bleak: 155 million people needed humanitarian aid due to the food crises that affected 55 countries in 2020. That is some 20 million more people than in 2019.

Food shortage scenarios “worsened in magnitude and severity” and “exacerbated pre-existing vulnerabilities” over the past year, due to “protracted conflicts, the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and extreme weather events,” the GNAFC states in the report.

The picture is particularly alarming in Latin America. According to the report, acute food insecurity increased significantly in the region in 2020, with at least 11.8 million people critically food insecure or worse, up from 8.1 million in 2019.

Most seriously, this is not the result of an analysis of all countries, but of just a group of 5 where GNAFC secured accurate data: Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. In other words, had all of the region’s countries been considered, several million more people would be affected by food crises.

The organization’s goal was to conduct an exhaustive study of 11 Latin American countries. But Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela were left out due to obstacles related to data collection. However, this did not prevent the GNAFC from providing some valuable and disturbing insights into the Venezuelan crisis.

Among the 5 countries included in the analysis, the most critical case is undoubtedly that of Haiti, which in 2020 experienced one of the 10 worst food crises in the world, with around 4.1 million people in a critical situation, representing 40% of the population analyzed. This is an increase of 5 percentage points compared to 2019.

The other 4 are on a second tier. In Guatemala, more than 3.7 million people are in a critical situation, of which almost 428,000 are in direct emergency. In Honduras, about 2.9 million people are in crisis and 614,000 in emergency. In El Salvador, 684,000 and 95,000, respectively. And in Nicaragua, 400,000 are in a critical situation.

Causes and consequences

Years of consecutive drought, endemic poverty, and a deteriorating security environment have led to one of the world’s largest migration crises. Pandemic restrictions slowed the northward exodus in the first half of 2020. But some 470,000 Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans left to seek refuge abroad as of July 2020.

The structural factors behind hunger in the region were compounded by the pandemic and natural disasters. Tropical storms, hurricanes, and floods contributed to a sharp increase in acute food insecurity in Central America and, to a lesser extent, in the Caribbean, starting with the landfall of storms Amanda and Cristobal in May and June. In Haiti, tropical storm Laura caused losses in crop and livestock production in August.

Then, in November, two category 4 hurricanes, Eta and Iota, impacted over 8 million people throughout Central America. In Guatemala, more than 137 million hectares of crops were damaged and caused economic losses of over US$115 million. In Honduras, an estimated 569,220 hectares were lost, equivalent to 70% of the cultivated area before the storms.

These conjunctural factors were compounded by very poor economic structures, unable to produce enough to feed the entire population. Haiti is an extreme example. In 2019, it faced a significant decline in tourism and foreign direct investment, and a blockage of its economic activities due to social unrest, which contributed to a recession.

During the pandemic, high production costs and shortages of agricultural supplies further limited food production capacity, leading rural households to sell their assets in exchange for food in 2020.

In Central America, years of poor harvests led to higher food prices, which depleted household incomes and savings. Restrictive measures to curb the spread of Covid-19, including border and business closures, further exacerbated pre-existing vulnerabilities and hastened a major economic and labor crisis for the region. Unemployment rates soared, particularly in the informal sector, where nearly two-thirds of the region’s workforce is employed.

Bleak outlook

Growth projections for the region for 2021 are bleak at best. A return to pre-pandemic economic activity levels is expected to take several years. Given the severity of the regional economic contraction in 2020 and the slow recovery, GNAFC expects poverty and inequality rates to remain high throughout 2021, with little respite for food-insecure households.

In Haiti, the report argues that food prices will rise in line with the lean season, which began in March. Limited migration to the Dominican Republic will also likely reduce income-generating opportunities for vulnerable households. These factors are expected to heighten acute food insecurity in 2021, when about 4.4 million Haitians, representing 46% of the population, are projected to be in a crisis from March to June 2021. This figure represents an increase of 6 percentage points from the 2020 peak.

The destruction caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota in Central America will continue to impact food security for most of 2021, and the Network anticipates atypically high food assistance needs in Guatemala and Honduras. In the former, 3.7 million people are expected to be in crisis. For the period from July to September 2021, the report projects that about 3.3 million people in Honduras will be in crisis, representing some 35% of the population.

Likewise, over 1 million people will be in a critical situation in El Salvador between June and August, representing a 53% increase in food assistance needs from the 2020 peak. As for Nicaragua, the report projects that between 250,000 and 500,000 people will be in crisis in the July-August 2021 period.

The Venezuelan case

Although acute food insecurity estimates for Venezuela were not included in the report presented on Wednesday due to insufficient data, some indicators suggest that the dramatic food crisis experienced by the country in 2019 is likely to have worsened in 2020. In 2019, Venezuela’s was one of the 10 worst food crises globally, with 9.3 million people in need of emergency food assistance, representing 32% of the population.

According to an FAO monitoring report, in August 2020, 70% of respondents did not have enough food to meet energy needs or had to limit the diversity of their diet, 32% had exhausted food reserves and 11% had gone at least 24 hours with no food.

Venezuela was on the brink of economic collapse before the pandemic, a situation that worsened following the national lockdown imposed by Covid-19 from mid-March to June 1st, and the subsequent strict closures in states with high infection rates. Over the past year, oil production declined amid international sanctions and declining international prices, leading to a 30% year-on-year GDP contraction.

Oil shortages severely constrained food production and transportation. During the pandemic, 79% of remittance recipients saw their incomes plummet as inflation soared to 844% between January and September 2020, making food and other basic goods increasingly unaffordable.

The prospect of worsening fuel shortages and traffic restrictions in 2021 will likely further limit food distribution and access to food markets and contribute to rising inflation. Unstable access to water, sanitation, electricity and other basic services will in turn complicate efforts to contain the pandemic and deliver humanitarian assistance to vulnerable households, according to the GNAFC.

Due to the severe crisis in Venezuela since 2014, nearly 5.5 million people have left the country as migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, the largest migratory exodus from Latin America in modern history. Covid-19 mitigation measures disproportionately affected refugees and migrants in host countries due to high levels of labor informality. With no savings or access to social security networks, vulnerable migrant households struggled to afford food and housing.

Despite border closures, between March and December, some 143,000 Venezuelans returned home after being left with nothing in the countries to which they had migrated. However, in September, the flow of returnees slowed and outward migration resumed as neighboring economies recovered. For the Network, the evolving humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is likely to continue to fuel the exodus, placing increased pressure on neighboring countries.

Due to the ongoing pandemic and regional economic conditions, around 5 million people across the region affected by the Venezuelan crisis will require emergency food aid in 2021, the report projected. The estimate represents a 94% increase compared to projected needs in 2020, before the pandemic when 2.59 million people required assistance.

Source: infobae