As drought breeds hunger in Guatemala, farming program aims to help

Lilian Ramos, 33, catches a fish as part of a fish farming project by the UN's World Food Program to combat malnutrition in a region known as the Central American Dry Corridor, in San Agustin Acasaguastlan, Guatemala August 22, 2024. /Josue Decavele

SAN AGUSTIN ACASAGUASTLAN, Guatemala - Drought and crop failure are a pervasive threat in Guatemala where hunger and malnutrition run rampant, particularly in rural areas - a reality that international aid programs are trying to curb.

Workers from the U.N.'s World Food Program are aiming to train people in Guatemala's rural countryside on sustainable farming practices to help combat malnutrition.

Guatemala straddles a region known as the Central American Dry Corridor where, over the past decade, droughts have been longer and more severe, and extreme weather events like hurricanes have been causing widespread damage.

This puts families living in the Dry Corridor, particularly small and medium-sized farmers and Indigenous people, in vulnerable situations unable to properly feed their children.

Guatemala's rate of stunting is consistently one of the highest in Latin America, UNICEF data shows. In 2022, 44 percent of children in Guatemala fell outside of the normal height-for-age range.

"Before we didn't know what fish farming was. There was a lot of malnutrition here," said Lilian Ramos, a fish producer in the Tecuiz community of San Agustin Acasaguastlan, a town in the Dry Corridor.

Her young children accompany her to a pond where she tosses in a net, retrieving multiple fish.

"We started with a small well and we saw how we grew little by little," Ramos added.

The World Food Program training emphasizes the use of innovation and anticipatory actions to minimize damage to crops and food sources, enabling community farms to endure difficult weather challenges and continue 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," said Tania Goossens of the World Food Program in Guatemala.