Guatemala & Food Security

The World Hunger Fund recently made a grant of $15,000 to World Accord to help reactivate the agricultural activities of Mayan women farmers in Guatemala who lost their crops as a result of severe storms and flooding. World Accord and Mujeres en Accion, its partner in Guatemala gratefully acknoweledge this support. This article tells the story.

Background

On May 30, 2010 tropical storm Agatha dumped 1 metre of rain over Guatemala, killing at least 165 people and damaging homes and crops throughout the country. Since then Guatemala has been struck by 5 major tropical storms, and uninterrupted rains. The heaviest rainy season in the region in 50 years has caused numerous mudslides, blocked roads, and flash floods. Heavy losses to the production of basic grains and limited access to food and seeds have aggravated the current food insecurity for the more than half of the population that lives below Guatemala’s poverty line. Guatemala has the highest number of children with acute malnutrition in Latin America, and is number four in terms of chronically malnourished children in the world. Most of these children are from rural, indigenous communities. Following Storm Agatha, the Guatemalan government calculated that about 25,000 hectares have been damaged or destroyed, representing $38 million in losses. New national estimates are difficult to obtain due to the continuous rains.

Effect on Mujeres en Acción

Mujeres en Acción is an association of 41 rural indigenous women’s groups that supports agriculture and micro-enterprise through trainings, community organizing, and micro-credits. The departments of Chimaltenango, Sololá, Sacatepequez where MeA is primarily active, have suffered numerous landslides and flash floods. All of MeA’s more than 1,200 members are involved in subsistence agriculture. 60% of these members have completely lost their crops of corn and beans – the staple foods in their diet due to the storms and persistent rains. MeA estimates the total value of the losses to their members at about Can $221,000. MeA provided emergency assistance (food, blankets, organizing shelter) to severely affected families the communities it serves immediately following Tropical Storm Agatha.

Mujeres en Acción will use the $15,000 granted by the World Hunger Fund to help 590 families dependent on subsistence agriculture begin to reactivate their farming activities. Helping these families start growing food again is critical to ensuring their access to food next year, and to helping them remain on the land. Mujeres en Accion will use these funds to provide families with seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs, as well as money to secure their access to land for next year.

Looking for Connections

In a future blog entry, we will discuss some of the potential links between the different extreme weather events being felt by World Accord’s partners: floods in Pakistan, storms in Guatemala and Honduras, melting glaciers in Nepal. Some or our partners are now beginning to speak about these changes as impacts of climate change, and are reflecting on how this affects people living in poverty – those least responsible for climate change in the first place.