Caribbean & Central America - September 2024

In late July Guatemala’s national council for food security and nutrition (Conasan), the inter-ministerial body that leads policy direction on food and nutritional security, approved its annual operative plan for 2025, which earmarks funding of Q$14.2bn (US$1.84bn), up 33% on the 2024 budget. Addressing food insecurity – an issue which successive governments have declared a priority but failed to tackle – is a key pledge of the left-of-centre government led by President Bernardo Arévalo which took office in January, promising to reduce malnutrition by 10%. An April 2024 update by the World Bank highlights that Guatemala’s child malnutrition rate was 47%, putting Guatemala among the worst ten countries in the world.

Long attributed to structural inequalities, the issue of food insecurity in Guatemala, where 55.1% of the 17.4m population lives below the poverty line on World Bank data, has been exacerbated in recent years by the continuing impacts of Hurricanes Eta and Iota in late 2020, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, rising prices of energy, fertiliser, and agricultural inputs as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the impact of climate change, among other factors.

The gravity of the situation was recently highlighted by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net), a leading provider of early warning and analysis on food insecurity, in a report released on 31 July. The report, which warns that crisis outcomes will persist from June to September 2024, notes that irregular rainfall and high temperatures damaged staple grain crops from at least three past cycles, which will affect the availability of food, labour demand, and income sources of poor rural households.

Fews Net also estimates that the population in need will be between 2.0-2.5m people for this period, highlighting that while year-on-year inflation, which was running at 3.78% in July, has slowed, food prices remain above average. It reports that maize and bean prices remain at between 10-25% and 25-45% above the five-year average, respectively, given the distortion of seasonal trends due to the recurrent climate shocks since 2019/2020.

Meanwhile a report by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) published on 30 June warns that the humanitarian crisis in Guatemala is intensifying as a result of the impact of the La Niña weather phenomenon, including heavy rainfall, landslides, and floods. The WFP warns the situation is particularly critical in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Chiquimula, Huehuetenango, Sacatepéquez, and Sololá, where 30-45% of the population requires food assistance – a situation expected to escalate in the coming months due to persistent climate-related challenges. Highlighting that, as regards acute malnutrition rates for children under five years, Guatemala reported a cumulative record of 16,384 cases in the first half of 2024, WFP warns that increased food insecurity stemming from climate-related impacts is likely to exacerbate Guatemala’s already severe malnutrition situation.

Against this backdrop, since taking office, the Arévalo government has indicated its intention of addressing what remains a major priority. In Conasan’s first meeting in late March, the secretary of food and nutritional security (Sesan) of the presidency, Mireya Palmieri, highlighted the importance of addressing malnutrition. She cited the need to reprogram the annual operational plan for food and nutrition security (Poasan) and update the national food and nutritional security policy (Polsan) and institutional initiatives such as the strategic food and nutritional security plan (Pesan) and institutional strategic plan (PEI).

Palmieri also said that efforts were being carried out involving different institutions such as the health ministry (MPSPAS) to address the nutrition component in the government’s planning model. She said that as of 22 March, 14.60% of the budget for Poasan 2024 had been executed – worth Q1.5bn which she said would seek to define the “physical goals and financial resources assigned to those issues which impact on food and nutritional security”. Palmieri also revealed plans to carry out the first national maternal and child health survey (ENSMI) in ten years, in conjunction with the education ministry.

Since then, on 30 April President Arévalo unveiled a multidimensional initiative entitled ‘Mano a mano’ (Hand to hand), with the objective of eradicating malnutrition and poverty, which aims to reach 114 of the country’s 340 municipalities over the next four years. Led by the social development ministry (Mides) and Sesan, it involves other institutions and seeks to provide comprehensive assistance in areas spanning infrastructure, health, education, and agriculture. 

Private sector efforts

Efforts to address malnutrition in Guatemala are also taking place through the private sector. In 2022 a local business conglomerate, Castillo Hermanos, announced a US$15m investment in a five-year social initiative, ‘Guatemaltecos por la Nutrición’, to address malnutrition in the country. At the time, José Silva, the initiative’s executive director, said it would be rolled out in Quiché and Huehuetenango, two of the departments most affected by food scarcity. Silva said the initiative would include mobile clinics and is based on five components: attention to primary health, nutritional support, water, and environmental sanitation, strengthening the family economy, and access to food. Since then it has expanded. Most recently on 22 July, Castillo Hermanos announced that it would be rolled out in eight municipalities in Guatemala department.

Other measures

The government has also sought to address poverty in other ways. On 31 May Arévalo announced that the economy ministry would intervene to stabilise supplies of rice, maize, and beans and to reduce price speculation. The same day he announced electricity subsidies for households which consume up to 100 KWh, which he said would reduce electricity bills by up to 80% and would benefit some 3m households.

On 10 June he then unveiled two cash transfer initiatives to help “ease the high cost of living for buying food in Guatemala”. He said that the targeted cash payments, which would cost the government Q150m and would begin on 1 July, would “mitigate” and “alleviate” the cost of living for vulnerable families in the capital and rural areas.

He said that the first initiative would constitute a monthly payment of Q250 to some 50,000 low-income families, benefitting some 250,000 people in total, who reside in 17 municipalities in Guatemala department.

Under the second scheme, 100,000 families living in extreme poverty in rural departments, who lack any connection to the electricity grid, would receive a one-off payment of Q1,000.