Even as the protracted information blackout of the pace of progress towards the creation of a promised Food Terminal, as one of the key elements of the regional food security undertaking, continues to be a matter of concern to CARICOM member countries, the wider issue of food security in the region is now the subject of a new report pinpointing malnutrition and hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While the focus of the regional response to various earlier high-profile soundings from UN agencies, among others, would appear to have taken CARICOM countries in the direction of treating the challenge as a food sufficiency issue, the more recent report titled ‘Financing Food Security and Nutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean,’ asserts that the main problem does not stem from a food shortage, per se, but from a lack of physical and economic access to food especially in rural areas in the region with high levels of poverty. The recent report was prepared jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the the Caribbean (ECLAC), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).