The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has urged Caribbean and Latin American countries to accelerate efforts against rising hunger, poverty, and inequality.
FAO Chief Qu Dongyu appealed to the region to reform agriculture to prevent a decade’s worth of backsliding in tackling hunger and poverty.
In addition, the FAO official called on the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) to expand the food supply in the Caribbean, where healthy diets are expensive.
Qu said persistent poverty and rising inequalities impact rural populations hardest, especially women, young people, and other vulnerable individuals.
He also advised urgent collective action to focus on the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising food insecurity, and the increasing prices of staple foods and agricultural products.
According to the FAO, between 2019 and 2021, the number of people who went hungry in the region increased by 30 percent to 56.5 million.
And the organisation noted that the food insecurity spike happened even though Latin America and the Caribbean is the world’s largest net food exporting region.
