Climate change is disrupting food systems across Latin America, UN report says
CNN
Violent weather exacerbated by climate change fueled hunger and food insecurity across Latin America and the Caribbean in 2023, according to a new United Nations report.
Violent weather exacerbated by climate change fueled hunger and food insecurity across Latin America and the Caribbean in 2023, according to a new United Nations report. Extreme weather drove up crop prices in multiple countries in the region in 2023, the report, which was written by several UN agencies including the World Food Program (WFP), says. Hot weather and drought, intensified by the El Niño weather phenomenon, raised the price of corn in Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, while heavy rain in Ecuador caused a 32 to 54 percent increase in wholesale prices in the same year. Though the report credits social safety nets with a measurable decrease in undernourishment throughout Latin America, it notes that the region’s poorest and most vulnerable populations are still more likely to suffer from food insecurity due to climate change – especially rural people. Quoting a 2020 study, the report states that 36% of 439 small farms surveyed in rural Honduras and Guatemala experienced “episodic food insecurity due to extreme weather events.” “In more rural areas they…don’t have a lot of resources to be able to weather a poor harvest,” said Ivy Blackmore, a researcher affiliated with the University of Missouri who studied nutrition and agriculture among Indigenous farming communities in Ecuador.
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