Food insecurity in Peru: how to face this crisis from a comprehensive perspective?

The food insecurity between 2014 and 2021 increased from 13.5% to 20.5% in Peru. This means that around 6.8 million Peruvians did not have anything to eat on several days of the yearaccording to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

For her part, the malnutrition In the period 2019-2021 it reached 8.30% of the population, that is, 2.7 million people. This was reflected in the chronic malnutrition rate in children under 5 years of age, than in the rural sector it reached 24.4%, while in urban areas it was 6.8%, which gives a national average of 11.5%.

How to deal with food insecurity in Peru?

Faced with this situation, the National Center for Strategic Planning (Ceplan) organized the XXII Forum of the Future, called Peru: Zero Hunger. Challenges to guarantee food security. Representatives of the Government, companies, civil society and academia participated in this space with proposals to address the problem.

According to Federico Arnillas, president of the Roundtable for Coordination to Fight Poverty, Peru has been slow to respond to the food crisis, so it is necessary to take urgent and immediate measures to deal with this scenario. In this sense, he points out that the critical factor is water, due to the droughts in the south of the country and the collapse of water management infrastructures in the north.

For this reason, he stressed the importance of identifying and applying a package of emergency measures. Among them, he highlighted the need to generate an adequate stock of food to support the affected population. Given the seriousness of the situation, he stressed the importance of establishing international alliances and thus obtaining the necessary inputs in order to serve the population effectively.

Meanwhile, Lena Arias, national nutrition program officer of the World Food Program, commented that it is necessary to address food insecurity not only from malnutrition and anemia, but also the “triple burden of malnutrition,” including overweight and obesity, which currently affects about 40% of children between the ages of 5 and 9.

“In this sense, one of the important issues is, then, the urgency of identifying which are the people, the places, the districts that are now expressing the highest prevalence of food insecurity and malnutrition and setting clear goals,” he remarked. In addition, he advocated for the elimination of severe food insecurity and for significantly reducing malnutrition problems, even by up to 50%.

Meanwhile, Ena Jaimes, deputy director of norms and guidelines of the National Center for Estimation, Prevention and Reduction of Disaster Risk (Cenepred), affirmed that looking only at the weather is not enough and pointed out that the key is to understand vulnerability and establish a scenario of risk. Additionally, she emphasized the lack of prospective and corrective management, and the need to work on solutions in the short, medium, and long term.

The meteorologist also highlighted the importance of addressing climate variability in the medium term to understand weather patterns and their impacts. She mentioned specific areas at risk of water scarcity, such as Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Moquegua, Tacna, Arequipa and Cusco, and emphasized the need to act preventively.

Likewise, Fernando Castro, coordinator of FAO Food System projects, highlighted the need for an innovative approach in addressing food security.

The expert highlighted that the focus on agri-food systems can contribute to solving the multiple dimensions of food security. Thus, he indicated that often the focus is limited to agricultural production or health outcomes, but all of this is part of an interconnected system with numerous actors and processes. Castro pointed out the relevance of the supply chain in this context, ranging from production to distribution and the market.