Longer term solutions to Guatemala's food shortage can be found in programs and partnerships that increase farm production. Ensuring farmers produce enough food to adequately feed their families is the aim of one Guatemalan project supported by Oxfam Canada.
A chronic state of malnutrition has worsened for some Guatemalans living in six regions that make up the country's dry corridor, illustrating the impact climate change is already having on the world's poorest people.
The country's president, Alvaro Colom, blamed irregular rains, hot and dry conditions and high food and fuel prices for food shortages that have left 54,000 families with not enough to eat and another 400,000 families at risk.
Due to the global economic downturn, Guatemala has also experienced a sharp drop in remittances, or money received from family members working outside the country.
Weather conditions have caused 60 to 80 per cent of corn and bean crops to fail, a situation that may lead to a worsening crisis in the new year, when harvests are finally collected. Guatemala is a country with chronic hunger, a situation that is exacerbated at this time of year in the gap when food reserves from last year come to an end before the new harvest is ready.
The World Food Program is responding with food parcels and the distribution of nutritional biscuits and a special fortified cereal. In concert with local authorities, they have distributed food parcels to 428,427 people in 21 departments in the country. Some 100,000 children under three years, who are at grave risk of malnutrition, and about 50,000 pregnant women and nursing mothers are receiving rations of the special cereal. Since March 2009, the Guatemalan government has been implementing an emergency food aid contingency plan.
Longer term solutions to Guatemala's food shortage can be found in programs and partnerships that increase farm production. Ensuring farmers produce enough food to adequately feed their families is the aim of one Guatemalan project supported by Oxfam Canada. By delivering training on agricultural practices, the Union of Farmers' Organizations in Verapaz helps members help themselves. The group participates in provincial and regional alliances and networks, negotiating natural resource and land access issues with the Guatemalan government. A women's commission has been set up to further incorporate women in the group's activities.
The Coordination of NGOs and Cooperatives aims to build a different kind of society, where collective and individual human rights are respected and where conditions for a dignified life are guaranteed. Congcoop, as the organization is known, works to strengthen other development NGOs and undertakes lobbying and advocacy with campesino and social organizations.
In particular, Congcoop carries out lobby and advocacy work on fiscal reform, agrarian reform and integral rural development. With research, Congcoop supports the efforts of national campesino organizations to demand their economic and social rights, especially the right to land, territory and natural resources, and to an integral agrarian reform.