SANTIAGO, July 16 (NNN-Xinhua) — Hunger is on the rise in Latin America and the Caribbean, affecting 42.5 million people in 2018, or 6.5 percent of the total population, a UN agency said.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, rates of the undernourishment have increased in recent years, said the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in its report titled “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019.”
During the first 15 years of this century, Latin America and the Caribbean succeeded in reducing undernourishment by half, but since 2014 hunger has been on the rise, said FAO Regional Representative Julio Berdegue.
“We have to rescue, on average, over 3.5 million people from hunger every year from now until 2030 if we want to reach the zero hunger goal of the Sustainable Development Goal 2,” he added.
The report links the rise in hunger to the region’s economic slowdown and the fall in commodity prices, with the poverty rate also on the rise after markedly falling for several years. — NNN-XINHUA
