2 May 2007Alertnet
Hundreds of thousands of landless Guatemalan laborers clustered in drought-prone hamlets could face a hunger crisis if corn prices rise further, the United Nations says.
The cost of the nation's main food staple has soared along with world prices near 10-year highs on soaring demand for ethanol, a crop plague in Guatemala's top corn-growing area, and dwindling supplies ahead of the next harvest.
The price of corn tortillas -- flat, round patties eaten with almost every Guatemalan meal -- has jumped in tandem. If corn prices rise further and all-too-common drought also hits Guatemala's poorest villages, the effects could be disastrous.
"The increase in the price of maize has left this sector of the population much more vulnerable than they were before ... and weather affecting crops is increasingly unpredictable due to climate change," said Ian Cherret, head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, in Guatemala.
"You put the two elements together and you begin to have a killer," he said in a recent interview, adding that "hundreds of thousands" could starve this year if rising prices combine with drought to create a worst-case scenario.
Nearly half of all Guatemalan children under 5 are chronically malnourished, the highest rate in the Western Hemisphere and the sixth highest in the world, just behind Burundi and Ethiopia, according to the United Nations.
Most vulnerable are Mayan farm workers with no land to grow food. In some of Guatemala's poorest hamlets, on its border with Honduras, the price of corn is already putting children's lives in danger.
In the village of Suchiquer Pinalito, where landless peasants struggle to survive by working on coffee farms, 3-year-old Santa Norberta Diaz's thinning hair and bloated belly are signs she is dangerously close to starving.
"All we eat is salt and tortillas," said her mother, 20-year-old Santa Angel, holding the tiny girl who is being treated at a government-run nutrition center to keep her alive. "Corn is getting more expensive every day."
ETHANOL PARTLY TO BLAME
The threat of hunger is ever present in the area around Suchiquer Pinalito. Five years ago, drought and low coffee prices combined to flood clinics with emaciated babies.
Growing ethanol demand is now partly to blame for the danger. The environmentally friendly fuel promoted by the U.S. government as a way to reduce oil imports has pushed international prices for the yellow corn used to make it near 10-year highs.
The white corn grown in Guatemala for human consumption but also imported from the United States, trades internationally at a premium over yellow corn, helping push up local prices.
"If prices continue rising we may see increases in acute malnutrition," said Willem van Milink, director of the United Nations World Food Program in Guatemala.
The average benchmark price for corn in Guatemala was 120 quetzales ($16) for 101 pounds (46 kg) in March, up almost 30 percent from March last year.
While President Oscar Berger has made combating hunger a national priority with programs aiming to boost corn output by handing out drought-resistant seeds and fertilizers, underlying problems mean farm aid is not enough to help the poor.
U.N. hunger expert Jean Ziegler says up to three-quarters of arable land is concentrated in the hands of wealthy landowners -- some 2 percent of the population -- and food prices are rising faster than wages.
Guatemala's limited tax take, the lowest in Latin America at just under 10 percent of gross domestic product, also prevents the government from adequately helping those in need.
Castolia Diaz, a bone-thin Chorti Mayan woman, ran out of her meager corn reserves planted on a rented, rock-filled patch of land more than two months ago. The end of the coffee and sugar harvests have put her husband out of work, so the pair can only afford to eat once or twice a day.
"Prices are too high," she said, sitting listless in front of her palm-thatched hut. "It is beating us down."
