Of the 2.3 billion people who suffered food insecurity in the world in 2021, 12% – some 268 million – live in Latin America and the Caribbean, a United Nations report revealed on Wednesday.
The report, entitled “The state of food security and nutrition in the world 2022”, assured that the situation was more serious in Asia and Africa but that in the Latin American and Caribbean region 40.6% of the population faced insecurity moderate or severe eating
“That is when people face uncertainty regarding their ability to obtain food and have been forced to do without nutritional quality or quantity in the food they eat,” Máximo Torero, chief economist at the UN Organization for Food and Agriculture, told a news conference. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), after the presentation of the report.
During the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, hunger continued to increase in Latin America and the Caribbean but at a slower rate than between 2019 and 2020, said the report prepared by five UN agencies and programs, including the FAO.
According to the study, nine million more people went hungry in the region in 2020 than in 2019 and an additional four million were pushed in that direction between 2020 and 2021.
Last year, hunger – a more serious category than moderate or severe food insecurity – affected 278 million people in Africa, 425 million in Asia and 56.5 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, the report said.
The UN also revealed that the difference between women and men who suffered moderate or severe food insecurity last year in Latin America and the Caribbean was 11.3%, the highest figure compared to other regions.
The report stressed that the war in Ukraine, which began on February 24, does not make things any easier.
“It is disrupting supply chains and further affecting grain, fertilizer and energy prices,” which will result in more price increases in the first half of 2022, the UN said. At the same time, more frequent and extreme weather events are also affecting supply chains, especially in low-income countries.
The report, which also analyzes problems of obesity and overweight, highlighted as an example the increase in overweight in children under five in Peru. Due to the isolation produced by the pandemic and the increased purchase of processed foods, in addition to less exercise, the rate of overweight minors went from 8% in 2019 to 10.6% in 2020 in that country.
The UN stressed that if governments offered incentives to producers of nutritious food “it would help make healthy diets less expensive and more affordable for everyone.” Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the regions where eating healthy is more expensive, the report highlighted.
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