Food Security in Central America

By Stacey Rosen, Shahla Shapouri, Birgit Meade, and Keith Wiebe

Outlook Report No. (GFA) , October 2001

These five reports on food security were produced as part of USDA reconstruction activities for Hurricane Mitch. They focus on the four individual countries most affected by the hurricane—El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

Keywords: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, production, imports, food security, GFA-11-01, GFA-11-02, GFA-11-03, GFA-12-01, GFA-12-02, ERS, USDA

In this report ...

Chapters are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

• Food Security in Latin America and the Caribbean, GFA-11-01, March 2000, 268 kb.

  This report includes a regional assessment of historical trends of imports, production, and yields. It also reviews the USDA-ERS food security assessment model and provides projections of key variables and country level food gaps.

• Food Security in Central America: An Update, GFA-11-02, July 2000, 2,451 kb.

  This report is more narrowly focused than the first report, specifically examining the implications of changes in growing conditions and movements in export prices on food availability in the current year and over the next decade for the four countries.

• Food Security in Central America: An Update, GFA-11-03, November 2000, 1,006 kb.

  This report examines food gaps in the four countries and the resource/land-quality constraints to increasing agricultural output. For the poorest countries, an increase in agricultural productivity is the key to improving food security. Distorted policies, limited resources, low input use, and little use of new technology are the principal factors constraining yields in some of the countries in the region.

• Food Security in Central America: An Update, GFA-12-01, June 2001, 471 kb.

  This report focuses on defining a healthy food basket for the study countries, assessing the cost of this basket, and comparing this cost to income levels in the four countries.

• Food Security in Central America: An Update, GFA-12-02, October 2001, 557 kb.

  This report focuses on Honduras and Nicaragua—the two countries most hurt by the region’s drought in 2001—and examines the implications of production shortfalls on food security.

Updated date: September 15, 2006