SAN AGUSTIN ACASAGUASTLAN, Guatemala (Reuters) – Drought and crop failure are a pervasive menace in Guatemala the place starvation and malnutrition run rampant, notably in rural areas – a actuality that worldwide help applications try to curb.
Staff from the U.N.’s World Meals Program are aiming to coach individuals in Guatemala’s rural countryside on sustainable farming practices to assist fight malnutrition.
Guatemala straddles a area generally known as the Central American Dry Hall the place, over the previous decade, droughts have been longer and extra extreme, and excessive climate occasions like hurricanes have been inflicting widespread harm.
This places households residing within the Dry Hall, notably small and medium-sized farmers and Indigenous individuals, in weak conditions unable to correctly feed their kids.
Guatemala’s price of stunting is constantly one of many highest in Latin America, UNICEF information exhibits. In 2022, 44 p.c of kids in Guatemala fell outdoors of the conventional height-for-age vary.
“Before we didn’t know what fish farming was. There was a lot of malnutrition here,” stated Lilian Ramos, a fish producer within the Tecuiz neighborhood of San Agustin Acasaguastlan, a city within the Dry Hall.
Her younger kids accompany her to a pond the place she tosses in a web, retrieving a number of fish.
“We started with a small well and we saw how we grew little by little,” Ramos added.
The World Meals Program coaching emphasizes using innovation and anticipatory actions to attenuate harm to crops and meals sources, enabling neighborhood farms to endure troublesome climate challenges and proceed producing.
“We do see some improvements … it is an excellent model that, even in terms of permeation, is an example for other countries that are also facing challenges from climate change,” stated Tania Goossens of the World Meals Program in Guatemala.
