SANTIAGO, Chile, CMC – Three United Agencies say the war in Ukraine, as well as the successive crises at the international level, compromise the access of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to food and key inputs for regional agriculture.

In a joint report, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) called for strengthening agricultural production and social protection systems and extending their reach in rural areas to respond to the triple challenge to combat food insecurity and the increase in extreme poverty, and support food production in the region.

The report titled “Towards sustainable food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean in response to the world food crisis,” was released by ECLAC executive secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, FAO regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mario Lubetkin, and Lola Castro, WFP regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

According to the report, the international context of successive crises and the war in Ukraine jeopardise Latin America and the Caribbean’s access to food and key inputs for regional agriculture. It said the impacts of the war in Ukraine on the productive sectors must be understood in the context of the various crises that have affected the world economy in the last 15 years: the 2008 financial crisis, the trade tensions between the United States and China and, since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These crises resulted in ruptures in various primary and manufacturing production chains, either due to an increase in trade barriers or disruptions in the global production and transportation system of goods,” according to the report.

It adds that the war in Ukraine has directly affected international trade in crude oil, natural gas, grains, fertilisers and metals.

As a result, higher energy and food prices are part of the factors that have led to a downward revision of global growth in 2022. The world economy is expected to grow 3.1 per cent in 2022, 1, 3 percentage points less than what was forecast before the outbreak of the war, while the Latin American and Caribbean region will expand 3.2 per cent this year, but will slow down markedly to 1.4 per cent in 2023, according to the latest projections from ECLAC.

The report warns that the extension of the current crisis, in which various threats of a productive, commercial, climatic and geopolitical nature converge, not only endangers food security but could also lead the region and the world to great setbacks in terms of poverty, inequality, climate action and sustainable development.