For the fifth consecutive year, erratic weather patterns – prolonged dry spells and excessive rains – have decimated maize and bean crops in the Dry Corridor of Central America. This has affected the food security of subsistence farmers meaning that many struggle on a daily basis to feed their families.
More than two million people in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua have been affected, and 1.4 million of them need urgent food assistance, according to a food security assessment carried out in late 2018 by the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization and government institutions.
Up to 82 per cent of the families sold their agricultural tools and animals, cut back or skipped meals and ate less nutritious foods to deal with their food insecurity. The assessment classifies these actions as emergency coping strategies.
Subsistence farmers and their families in the Dry Corridor are highly vulnerable to food insecurity. When they lose their crops, farmers try to find jobs in local plantations and often have no income to buy food. Other farmers migrate to cities, neighboring countries, or further afield.
According to WFP, over 25 per cent of households do not have sufficient income to cover the cost of the basic food basket.
Eight per cent of families indicated that they were going to resort to migration, which the assessment classifies as an extreme coping strategy.
Given the current situation, WFP plans to provide food assistance to more than 700,000 people living in the Dry Corridor. We have assisted more than 160,000 vulnerable people this year. Our work focuses in their immediate needs as well as helping them adapt to climate change.
WFP needs US$72 million to assist these people with food distributions in the short-term, and with capacity strengthening interventions in the medium- and long-term to help them build resilience, adapt to climate change and enhance national social protection systems~WFP
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