13. Despite considerable progress in the overall process of regional economic growth, serious problems of poverty still persist. At the beginning of the present decade, poverty affected 34% of the region's urban population and 53% of the rural population, with indigence levels of 13% and 30% respectively. Reality is much more dramatic when the situation of countries with food deficits and low incomes is taken into account, where urban poverty affects over 50% of the population and rural poverty exceeds 60%. Added to this is a trend towards an increase in the inequality of income distribution in 70% of the countries, which does not only remain unchanged by this reactivation of economic growth but, in some cases, is even becoming more acute.

14. Undoubtedly, the worst and most degrading form of poverty is food insecurity which, in its extreme degrees, does not only imply a permanent risk to life itself, but also to the safety of a future life where human potentials will be drastically and permanently reduced. Food insecurity levels in the region are still intolerably high, with nearly 64 million people in a situation of malnutrition, representing 13% of the regional population. The situation is much more delicate in low income countries with a food deficit, where these levels range between 20% and 40% of the population.

15. The persistence of these situations does not only reveal the existence of unacceptable living conditions from an ethical point of view, but also threatens the very basis of the stability of the region's societies and, consequently, of the process of growth itself which has begun to take place in the present decade. The urban-rural migratory process, caused by unacceptable levels of rural poverty and food insecurity in those sectors, feeds the concentration of poverty in the large cities of the region, with the consequent decrease of the best farmlands, congestion, pollution, lack of safety for citizens and, general deterioration of the quality of life. The flight from poverty and food insecurity caused by the lack of opportunities to generate income in rural areas, not only affects the large cities of Latin America and the Caribbean but, as a result of growing integration of economies at the world level, it is also beginning to overflow toward developed societies, even affecting their own stability. This has been called "the globalization of poverty". Reverting of this situation is a major challenge that the region must face in the immediate future.

16. In the two decades preceding the eighties nearly all the countries of the region experienced sustained increases in food energy supply (FES); on the regional average, these increases were of a yearly accumulated percentage of 0.8 and 0.6 respectively. This situation reverted in the decade of the eighties with a drop in the order of 0.2% per year.

17. The recent evolution of FES for the region as a whole, shows that the problems of the so called "lost decade" have been solved or overcome, and it is estimated that its level will reach approximately 2 950 calories by the year 2010. However, serious shortages persist in a series of countries representing about 16% of the regional population, and problems of poverty and access to food continue in all the countries, including those with adequate aggregate availability and even those that are food exporters.

18. The evolution of regional food security must be examined from the viewpoint of aggregate availability or food energy supply (FES) and in connection with individual or family access to an adequate nutritional level From the viewpoint of supply, it is necessary to determine if it was enough to meet socially desirable levels of demand; if it is stable in the long term; if its degree of external dependency is within manageable ranges and, finally if the food system is sustainable, or rather, if it is capable of ensuring the above conditions to future generations.

a) Aggregate supplies

39. Availability of natural, human and technological resources indicates that the region is in the position of adopting as a goal for 2010, the simultaneous atteinmement of two complementary objectives: to reduce of malnutrition from 15% - which was the level in 1991-92 - to 6% of the population and ensure that food energy supply is not under 2 700 calories per day per person in any country.

40. Reducing malnutrition in this proportion means going from the estimated level of 55 million people in the year 2010 (9% of the population), to 22 million. Assuming this target is achieved, one fourth of the countries in the region would still have malnutrition levels affecting an average of 25% of their population (40% in Haiti).

41. The target of supplying 2 700 calories per day per inhabitant by the year 2010, would require special efforts in the nine countries which presumably would not reach this level by that year, among them all the countries with the highest malnutrition levels.

42. As most of the countries in the region would exceed the target of 2 700 calories of FES by the year 2010, and several would be close to achieving it, the average regional production increase required would be slightly above growth trends: of 2.3 to 2.4%. However, for the group of countries with deficits, this rate should reach an average yearly growth of 3.5%, and of as much as 4.5% in the case of Haiti. This indicates that food transfers, under various concepts, will continue to be necessary for a long period of time in order to achieve the required supply.

43. The yearly average investment required to reach the above targets would be in the order of 37 billion (in 1993 US dollars), equivalent to about 22% of the value of sectoral production, 20 billion of which would be assigned to primary production; 10 billion to processing agroindustries, transport and storage of basic products; and 7 billion to the construction of infrastructure directly linked to production and distribution. While for the region as a whole this represents a marginal increase in relation to the value of sectoral investment trends, countries below 2 700 calories, would have to increase the investment level to a figure around 26% of the value of the agricultural sector’s gross production.

44. The areas for action and priority measures to progress in reducing malnutrition in the framework of the World Plan of Action, are the following:

a) In relation with basic food
b) Bases for action

45. The region possesses the resources and knowledge to provide a significant impetus to food production in basic grains as well as in meat, dairy products and fish. Per capita land availability is in the order of 1.8 ha/person for the region as a whole and of 1.3 hectares in the LIFDCs. Only 23% of this land is being used in the first group and only 17% in the second. On the other hand, there is an important margin for crop intensification and for the dissemination of already available modern varieties of the main food grains, provided substantial progress is made in incrementing the availability as well as, and above all, the efficiency of irrigation management.

46. Besides wheat, maize, rice, tubers and bananas, there are a number of different crops that are important at the local consumption level and which could be extended to other areas, such as cereals, legumes for human consumption, roots and tubers, as well as hundreds of wild and cultivated species used in tropical zones with high protein, calcium and iron contents, which on the average are two or three times higher than those of European crops and which, additionally, do not require the use of large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides.

47. In the area of livestock, the region has abundant grazing lands and is in a position to eradicate foot and mouth disease from the continent in the short and medium term; on the other hand, the region has shown the capacity to react quickly to the demand for poultry products. All of this, with the adequate policies, would allow satisfying the enormous future growth in the demand for meat products.

48. Coastal, lake and river resources, could allow a short term response to any increase in the demand for fish, the consumption of which, particularly in LIFDCs, is less than one kilo/inhabitant/year.

49. However, it is important to emphasize that, as the food supply of the countries of the Region has proved to be quite flexible in responding to demand stimuli, the production increase targets proposed below assume the adoption of agroeconomic policy measures -many of which transcend the rural activity- to determine that effective demand levels are the ones required for their implementation.

Objectives

50. In connection with average levels attained during 1989-91:

1. Increase production, especially in areas with underutilized potential, to reach by 2010 a 70% increase in the production of the main food crops for the region as a whole, and of at least 82% in countries with the highest malnutrition levels (Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and the Dominican Republic).
2. Expand the area under cultivation by about 27 million hectares (a net increase of 16%) by the year 2010, with due consideration to environmental sustainability in the incorporated areas.
3. Undertake a vigorous campaign in the LIFDCs to achieve an expansion of at least 54% (3.2% yearly growth) in cereal production.
4. Adopt measures to increase yields of the main cereals by at least 20%, raising the regional average to 2.5 tons/ha by the year 2010, and to a similar level, but starting from a lower floor, in the LIFDCs, a task that requires an average yearly growth of 1.8% in yields for wheat, 2.2% for maize and 2.5% for rice.
5. Increase productivity and stimulate widespread consumption of native underexploited food crops
6. Create the conditions for developing and strengthening local producers' organizations, ensuring room for participation and incentives for mobilization towards the achievement of food security.

Actions to be undertaken

51.

1. Develop technologies to improve yields and competitivity of native underexploited crops.
2. Stimulate fish production and above all its consumption, particularly in the LIFDCs, in most of which consumption levels of this product are the lowest (around one kilo per person/year) although many of them have important coastal and lake zones.
3. Strongly promote transition towards a sustainable agriculture.
4. Foster sectoral policies and programmes aimed at promoting investment and production increases.
5. Design new instruments that, within the framework established by adjustment policies, fill the gaps left by the elimination of functions previously performed by the public sector and which are considered necessary to induce the processes mentioned in the above points.

b) In connection with water resources management
Bases for action

52. The following problems have been detected in connection with water management: growing competition for its use between agriculture and other activities; water contamination processes; low efficiency in the utilization of traditional gravity irrigation systems; decrease in groundwater levels and flooding and salinization processes in a context where expanded control and more efficient utilization appear to be necessary conditions for any increase in production and productivity. Recent generalization of regional initiatives to reform water usage legislation would create the conditions to improve its management and promote its development.

Objectives

53.

1. Increase efficiency in utilization of traditional gravity irrigation systems by at least 20%.
2. At least double the expected increase of irrigated areas in the LIFDCs, where the estimated 17% growth by the year 2010 will not be enough to reach the proposed targets.

Actions to be undertaken

54.

1. Accelerate the establishment of watershed committees and strengthen those that are already in place, which allow replacement of the inefficient district management system, thus avoiding the harmful effects of fragmentation.
2. Invest in replacing and adapting traditional gravity irrigation water control systems in areas where the production potential does not justify more sophisticated alternatives In areas with a high potential, promote development of more efficient forms of water use, such as pressurized irrigation and others.
3. Develop training processes, within the framework of the watershed committees, not only in matters concerning the operation of systems, but also in the application of irrigation within the farm.
4. Promote a resolute reclamation and rehabilitation process of flooded and salinized lands.
5. Assign priority to massifying small irrigation plans, on the basis of a critical evaluation of existing experiences.
6. Accelerate decentralization processes and create possibilities for participation to delegate irrigation management to users' organizations which should establish a tariff system allowing adequate upkeep and ensuring payment.
7. Gather experiences from countries that have developed incentives for the private sector participation in irrigation investments, so as to adapt them to countries where such investments have not yet been promoted.

2. In the area of food entitlements
Bases for action

55. As a consequence both of their magnitude and their location, problems of access to food present specific challenges to the region, particularly to LIFDCs, depending on whether they affect small producers, landless workers, or the urban poor in large or medium size cities. These groups have the common characteristic of having been or still being the more deeply affected by adjustment policies.

56. The heterogeneity of current situations, even within the small producers' sector, imposes the need to establish differentiated policies by type of unit and location.

Objectives

57.

1. Reduce malnutrition in the region as a whole to no more than 6% of the population by the year 2010, and to no more than 16%, on the average, in the LIFDCs.

Actions to be undertaken

58.

1. In the small producers' sector, ensure the consolidation of viable or potentially viable units, through an integrated package of services, credit, technical assistance in production and marketing, access to modern inputs, etc., and establish land transfer mechanisms (agrarian reform, land funds or others) for small producers with insufficient land to achieve viable scales.
2. Create employment options in economic or social infrastructure construction activities, in their areas of residence, or strengthen employment possibilities in nearby urban centres or medium size cities, including work for food schemes for landless workers or workers with scarce land, who do not have access to agrarian reform programmes or to land funds.
3. Promote activities to increase women’s income level, considering the key role they play in low income families in orienting family expenditures toward basic needs.
4. Establish special focalized food programmes, with broad beneficiary participation, for groups which, due to age or other conditions, do not have access to productive employment.
5. Increase the efficiency and expand coverage of programmes for vulnerable groups (such as pregnant and nursing women, infants, preschool and school children, etc.) which have had such good results in reducing malnutrition and infant mortality and in improving school performance.

3. In the area of sustainability of food systems

Bases for action

59. The need to find increasingly sustainable production processes and consumption patterns is imperative, considering the magnitude and rate of deterioration suffered by agroecologic systems as a result of desertification, erosion, water pollution, salinization, loss of biologic diversity and the risk of increasing genetic crop uniformity; growing public awareness and pressure in relation to the consequences of these phenomena and the need to revert them; and the fact that environmental considerations may be construed as barriers to imports.

Objectives

60.

1. Put a check to environmental deterioration processes in agricultural ecosystems using the relationship between the social costs and benefits of the activities undertaken as a criteria.
2. Increase the energetic efficiency of food systems without inhibiting required productivity increases.
3. Avoid the erosion of knowledge of traditional crops and plants as well as the loss of their genetic base.

Actions to be undertaken

1. Promote integrated plant nutrition systems through a better association of agricultural and non agricultural nutrient sources; reduce by this means the need for mineral fertilizers, where restricted availability of organic residues and labour to apply them do not limit their use.
2. Promote the dissemination of integrated pest management through different combinations of crop rotations, intercropping or other types of management, and adoption of biologic pest control and plant health programmes such as plant quarantines, etc. These measures are particularly relevant in crops that utilize pesticides intensively such as cotton, maize, rice, soybean, fruit and vegetables.
3. Disseminate productive processes and stimulate consumption patterns that improve the energetic efficiency of food systems.
4. Adopt measures to stop genetic variety losses by promoting their conservation in gene banks (ex- situ) with adequate resources to ensure compliance with international standards for long storage periods, as well as conservation in natural ecosystems and habitats (in situ), particularly strengthening the capacity of small producers in marginal areas to manage and improve their genetic resources.

4. In the area of dissemination of technology
Bases for action

61. Changes in the functioning rules of economies have given rise to the imperative need to increase competitivity and the dissemination of technical progress. However, productive transformation and dissemination of technology in the region has been concentrated on certain areas, products and producers, overlooking small scale dry farming. On the other hand, structural adjustment measures themselves, with the reduction of public expenditure, have particularly affected agricultural research and development activities and, in many countries, transfer activities to small producers have practically been abandoned.

Objectives

62.

1. Increase public expenditure on technology research, development and transfer regarding basic food crops for mass consumption.
2. Establish national and regional technological innovation systems in the field of agriculture.

Action to be taken

63.

1. Increase public expenditure in research, assigning priority to basic mass consumption products, especially those produced by small farmers, emphasizing the search for varieties that will allow overcoming the main restrictions faced by this sector, and ensuring a closer link between the latter’s technology requirements and research and dissemination activities.
2. Create the conditions to induce food agroindustries to become productive transformation and technology dissemination agents for small producers, compensating agroindustries for the transaction costs involved in the establishment and consolidation phase of the relationship between them and small producers.
3. Strengthen the creation, adaptation and adoption of technology through the organization of national and regional technology innovation systems for agricultural and rural development, through close links among producers, research institutes, academic centres and technical schools in the areas of agricultural, forestry and fisheries production.
4. Create the capacity to learn about, select, adapt and eventually disseminate the results of world biotechnology research, in line with available resources, the production structure and national needs, understanding that a prior condition for their dissemination is the massification of the results of conventional genetics.

5. In the area of food trade
Bases for action

64. The context within which links between national food systems and the world market will be established is provided by the agreements signed in the Uruguay Round of GATT, the role of the World Trade Organization, regional integration agreements and bilateral agreements. In the framework of recent economic reforms, most countries of the region have reduced barriers to food imports without equivalent counterpart action from developed countries. In general, it is estimated that, while countries exporting grain, meat and dairy products will obtain the greatest advantages, importers of these products in the LIFDC group will be adversely affected; the same is true, and even more so, for the Caribbean countries that depend on products affected by the loss of preexisting preferential agreements.

Objectives

65.

1. Reduce the degree of dependency on external food supplies to levels deemed economically, socially and politically desirable, limiting the vulnerability of food supplies in the face of extreme fluctuations in world food trade.
2. Make sure that safeguards established in the agreements of the Uruguay Round of GATT are effectively adopted

Action to be taken
66.

1. Train public sector agents in the knowledge and implications of the rules stemming from the Uruguay Round agreements, particularly as regards measures on possible negative effects of the reform in the less developed and net food importing countries.
2. Incorporate considerations on food security in regional and sub-regional market agreements, particularly in aspects relating to the dependence of countries and the instability of yearly supply, considering that the degree of variability of the latter at the sub-regional scale is considerably lower than that of several countries integrating those markets.
3. Create or strengthen early warning systems in countries with high rates of instability in basic food production.
4. Create or strengthen CODEX Alimentarius Committees for its dissemination and adoption by producers, considering that it has become the reference point for GATT's health and phytosanitary standards.

6. In the Area of Demography and Human Resources
Bases for Action

67. The drop of the overall birth rate in the region (from about 6% in the 60's to 3% at the end of the past decade) was not uniform among countries or among the various social strata in each country. In fact, very high rates continue to be prevalent in several of them, for example, in Bolivia (4.6%), El Salvador (5.4%), Haiti (4.8%), Honduras (4.9%), Nicaragua (5%), etc.; in other words, precisely in low income food deficit countries. Therefore, it is estimated that in LIFDCs, population growth will remain at high levels (2.2 %) up to the year 2010, as compared to the remaining countries of the region (1.5%). The increase in economically active population will be even greater than population growth and it will be difficult for it to be productively absorbed in agricultural activities. This will lead to increased migratory processes, first to urban centres and/or neighbouring countries, and a considerable number of people will try to establish themselves in developed countries.

Objectives

68.

1. Assign the greatest priority to the development of human resources in the rural world as a necessary condition to meet the requirements of increasing competitivity in achieving access to better living conditions and income levels.
2. Ensure that families have the knowledge and necessary resources to regulate their size to the levels they consider desirable to improve their quality of life.

Action to be taken

69.

1. Significantly increase investment in education so as to, at least, generalize command of basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, rule of three) in addition to reading and writing as a condition to apply improved technologies.
2. Develop, adapting them to the idiosyncrasy of each society, programmes to allow mothers to adapt their child-bearing to the desired level.
3. Establish mechanisms that may allow children and adolescents from poor families not to give up their studies, creating the means to compensate these households for the loss of income this involves.
4. Ensure that programmes on title deeds, land assignation and others avoid gender biases.

7. In the Institutional Area
Bases for Action

70. Resource decentralization and deconcentration processes, as well as the opening of potential space for the participation of civil society, have become part of the policies of many countries of the region. In any event, even in cases of a clear political will to develop them, these policies face obstacles because they reproduce, at the local level, the compartmentalized nature of public functions at the central level. Additionally, an aggravating factor lies in the fact that the formation of technical cadres is not always in line with the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of greater public resources made available to them. Both factors - compartmentalization and an inadequate technical level - constitute obstacles to the utilization of the development potential provided by strengthened links between medium size cities and their rural hinterland, in terms of stimulating mutual demand of goods and services.

Objectives

71.

1. Strengthen the link between medium size cities and agro rural surroundings.
2. Promote decentralization by strengthening the management capacity of local authorities for a participative policy at the local level, to allow: a much more accurate perception of specific shortcomings, restrictions and development potential; turn the population's organized participation into a "resource"; and ensure social control of public functions.

Action to be taken

72.

1. Stimulate the creation or strengthening of homogeneous and representative organizations of the local population. Homogeneity should be such that the problems of the people in these organizations have a reasonable degree of similarity, so as to avoid spurious forms of representation.
2. Efforts should be made for the decentralization process of public management to be accompanied by the corresponding deconcentration of resources (human, material and financial) and for it to integrate potentially synergetic functions as regards food problems, such as those relating to food, health, access to drinking water, fuel, nutritional education, etc.
3. Adapt the general guidelines of agricultural sector national policy to regional and local characteristics, increasing the effectiveness of its impact and efficiency in the use of resources.
4. Tackle the problems of poverty, food insecurity and local environmental deterioration, aiming accurately at the nature of deficiencies.
5. Generate local savings and mobilize them towards local projects.
6. Integrate fragmented markets in the process of strengthening regional market networks, especially wholesale markets which simplify the process of bringing together buyers and sellers in one place, thus reducing transaction costs.
7. Provide specific content to the nature of training and technology improvement requirements in the agricultural area as well as at the level of often incipient local industries.
8. Make information accessible, especially information required to improve the strategies for obtaining employment and income, as poor information or the lack of it, contribute to poor resource allocation and to the loss or non perception of existing opportunities.
9. Meet specific demands relating to environmental problems affecting a locality.

Responsibilities for the implementation of priority actions

73. National governments have the initial responsibility for creating the conditions required to achieve food security in their respective countries, through the implementation of the priority actions outlined in the foregoing paragraphs. Additionally, they share responsibilities with other countries within and outside the region, with international and non governmental organizations and with civil society, in the pursuit of food security target.

Responsibilities at the regional and sub-regional levels

74. he governments of the region should create adequate incentives so that the behaviour of the agents involved will be coherent with food security objectives and targets.

1. Strengthen technical cooperation networks directly and indirectly related to food security.
2. Consider sub-regional integration agreements in the framework of an open regionalism, particularly as far as ensuring that the flow of goods related to the attainment of adequacy and stability in food systems is not hindered.
3. Expedite mechanisms aimed at sharing technological knowledge directed at sustainable production in highlands, semi-arid lands and in the humid tropics.
4. Strengthen cooperation in the identification and dissemination of efficient water utilization methods and techniques.
5. Establish equitable and efficient agreements on transboundary water management, emphasizing sustainability.
6. Expand the scope of information and early warning systems establishing regional networks to provide information on foreseeable crop and market trends.
7. It is the responsibility of regional financial assistance agencies as well as of research and technical assistance institutions to focalize their activities toward regional food security objectives. Regional and sub-regional banks particularly, should optimize and assign priority to the use of financial resources for countries with food deficits which are facing difficulties in financing their food import requirements.

Responsibilities at the international level

75. International agencies and the donor country community should:

1. Support national governments and private institutions in planning, executing and revising food production and agricultural and rural development programmes and projects, through technical cooperation and investment.
2. Support water management programmes at the national as well as regional and sub-regional levels.
3. Support governments in the design and implementation of programmes to control hiper-urbanization, and in the dissemination of methods to bring effective birth rates to the desired level.
4. Support national programmes intended to improve access conditions of vulnerable or poor population groups, through nutritional assistance, improvement of home sanitary conditions and education.
5. Support national programmes aimed at improving infrastructure to eliminate bottlenecks that lead to increased post-harvest losses, hinder marketing and increase the cost of basic mass consumption foods.
6. Strengthen the capacity of institutions such as the CGIAR, to contribute to the scientific and technological development of national and regional centres, emphasizing their orientation towards the requirements of small producers and basic mass consumption products.
7. Promote, at the level of the World Trade Organisation, the correct application of the Uruguay Round of GATT agreements regarding possible negative effects of the reform programme in the less developed net food importing countries.

76. International financing agencies should:

1. Optimize the management of financial resources assigned to support countries with food deficits facing serious difficulties to finance their food import requirements.
2. Assist governments in the adoption of programmes aimed at promoting social development in the weaker sectors of society.

The expected role of civil society

77. Private enterprise non governmental organizations have an important role to play in the following areas:

1. Technology transfer and development of human resources through the dissemination of mechanisms to link agricultural industries and trade with small and medium size producers.
2. Compliance with and dissemination of international agreements connected with sustainability, such as the International Plant Protection Convention, the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing, quality and hygiene standards established in the CODEX Alimentarius, etc.
3. Assume responsibilities in the field of water resources management and investment in the expansion of irrigation.
4. Improve distribution networks for food and for the inputs to produce it.
5. Create conditions of access to formal credit for small and medium size agroindustrial and agrocommercial enterprises.
6. Concentrate its programmes, particularly in the case of NGOs, in areas where small producers and poor urban and rural consumers are predominant.

78. Society must resist the various forms of discrimination affecting women, youth, indigenous groups and the poor in general.

Source: AGROSTAT (and calculations in TSP)
*/ Basic norm: Calculated on the basis of the ENERQ, FAO programme
**/ Sufficiency = Mean / Basic norm

Source: AGROSTAT (and calculations in TSP).
*/ Foods = Basic grains (roots & tubers, legumes, cereals) + sugar + milk + meat + vegatable oils (expressed in millons of calories per ton).