WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION   
G/AG/GEN/104 
2 November 2012 
 (12-6081) 
Committee on Agriculture Original: Spanish 
  
 
THE MARRAKESH DECISION AND FOOD SECURITY:  CONTRIBUTION OF THE 
INTER AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR COOPERATION ON AGRICULTURE (IICA) 
IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 
 
Submission by IICA 
   The following submission, dated 1 November 2012, is being circulated at the request of the 
Inter-American Institute for C ooperation on Agriculture (IICA). 
 
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 1. The main purpose of this document is to provi de a summary of an IICA document on the food 
security situation in the Americas, the critical f actors affecting it, and how these factors impact 
different regions and countries and the most vulnera ble population groups.  The General Secretariat 
requested this document so that it could be presented at the 42
nd General Assembly of the 
Organization of American States (OAS), which was attended by chancellors and held in Cochabamba, 
Bolivia, on 3-5 June 2012. 
2. The concept of food security  began to be developed following the adoption of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but it was only in 2001, thanks to the Food and 
Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Na tions, that it acquired its current and widely 
accepted definition, according to which food security exists "when all people, at all times, have 
physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary 
needs and food preferences fo r an active and healthy life".1 
3. Food security involves the fulfilment of four interrelated conditions or "dimensions":  
(a) the "availability" or existence of sufficien t quantities of food of appropriate quality for all 
inhabitants;  (b) "access", meaning that individuals  have access to adequate entitlements and resources 
for acquiring appropriate and nutriti ous foods that correspond to their culture;  and (c) conditions that 
ensure the biological "utilization" of food in order to reach a state of nutritional well-being where all 
physiological needs are met;  and (d) "stable" ava ilability and access to adequate food at all times. 
4. The level of food availabilit y in the Americas is good.   In general, food production has 
grown in the Americas, although there are major di fferences between regions and countries in Latin 
America and the Caribbean (LAC).  The Andean, South and Central regions showed high rates of 
production growth between 1990 and 2010, while there was less growth in the Caribbean region, due 
to reduced vegetable production a nd stagnant grain production.  However, in LAC there is still a food 
supply gap of close to two million tonnes.  Furthe rmore, the volatility of international prices has a 
negative impact on production.  While productio n has grown, food imports and reliance on 
international markets have increased much faster th an production.  This situation may be risky, and 
varies from region to region.  The Northern and S outhern regions practically ensure that food is 
                                                      
1 http://www.fao.org/cfs/es  G/AG/GEN/104 
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  available to the population through local productio n, while the other regions - especially the 
Caribbean - are highly dependent on food impor ts, despite having reduced this dependence. 
5. Regional production could grow more quickly and make a bigger contribution to food 
security, if there were greater investment in agri culture and rural areas and more stimuli for research, 
extension and transfer of relevant technologies.  Increasing agricultural productivity, efficiency and 
sustainability is more important th an having additional arable land. 
6. The LAC countries managed to reduce hunger and under-nutrition.   Overall, the 
International Food Policy Research Institute's  (IFPRI) Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows steady 
improvement between 1990 and 2010, and most count ries in LAC fall into the category of low food 
insecurity (index under 4.9) or moderate food insecu rity (between 5 and 9.9), but under-nutrition is 
critical in Haiti, where it afflicts 58 per cent of  the population, while in Bolivia, Guatemala, 
Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Pana ma, at least one out of every six citizens is 
undernourished.  It is striking that the rate of  under-nutrition among the ge neral population is lower 
than the rate of child under-nutrition in Urugua y (2 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively) and 
Argentina (1 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively). 
7. The problem is not the availability of food, but access to it.   In the globalized world, 
"country access" is gaining more and more importance.   In order to finance potential food imports, 
countries are using resources obtained from goods and services exports, external loans, and remittances sent from abroad.  All these items are included in the international monetary 
reserves (IMR).  The IMR indicator, measured in term s of months of food imports, shows that the net 
food-importing regions are able to finance from 43 to 98 months of food imports.  It is not 
recommended that this indicator fall below 12 months, as it limits countries' negotiating 
and preparation possibilities.  Countries like Haiti, and to a lesser extent, St Lucia, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, have little liquidity to obtain food on the international market in 
the event of domestic food shortages. 
8. The Caribbean is the most vulnerable region in  terms of international access to food.  
International net food purchases account for 2 to almost 10 per cent of Gross Domestic 
Product (GDP) in Caribbean countries, which makes them highly vulnerable to potential increases in 
international food prices. 
9. Price volatility affected the purchasing power of exports.  Moreover, hi gh international food 
prices can have a significant impact on net impor ting countries' access to food, depending on 
the weight of imports on the domestic food supply  and the composition of agricultural export and 
import baskets. 
10. "Individual access" and the debt of many LAC c ountries is the problem.  Food consumption is 
directly linked to the population's level of income, its growth and the way in which it is distributed.  
The high indices of poverty, indigence and inequality in the distribution of income in the region's countries, combined with inflationary pressures, affect the ability of vulnerable population groups and 
territories to have real access to food.  Moreover, there is a direct correlation between GDP per capita 
and food consumption per capita (expressed in calories). 
11. To achieve food security, the biological utilization of food must be improved.   In addition 
to concerns about unhealthy diets and growing leve ls of obesity, there are concerns over problems of 
sanitation (86 per cent of the urban population and 55 per cent of the rural population had access to 
some type of sanitation system in 2011), access to pot able water (7 per cent of the population of LAC 
did not have access in 2008), medical care and food health and safety services.  The latter problems 
tend to increase as trade flows grow and, while in so me countries (like the United States) these issues 
are within the operational scope of the Ministry of Agriculture, in most of the countries in the region  G/AG/GEN/104 
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  they fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministries of Health and Education, with little or no involvement 
by the Ministries of Agriculture. 
12. It is necessary to involve family agricul ture and small and medium-scale agriculture.   In 
LAC, approximately 14 million farms are used for fa mily agriculture, which directly or indirectly 
involves 60 million people.  Furthermore, family ag riculture produces between 27 and 67 per cent of 
foodstuffs, occupies between 12 and 67 per cent of  the land used for agricultural production 
and generates between 57 and 77 per cent of agricultural employment.  Family agriculture is 
important even in large countries like Brazil and Colombia, and also in medium-sized countries 
like Ecuador.  In Brazil, this sector produces 67 pe r cent of beans, 84 per cent of yucca, 49 per cent 
of maize and 52 per cent of milk;  in Colomb ia, it produces over 30 per cent of the annual crops 
(especially maize and beans);  and in Ecuador, it produces 64 per cent of potatoes, 85 per cent 
of onions, 70 per cent of maize and 83 per cent of  sheep meat.  In Central America, 96 per cent 
of basic grain producers are family farmers and their produce supplies the national and Central American regional markets.  In addition to family agriculture, th ere is also small-scale 
agriculture, with approximately 15 million producers. 
13. Food security in LAC calls for greater access to technologies that would enable small-scale 
and family farmers, ethnic groups and marginalized  rural populations to improve and diversify their 
production and to improve their conditions of partic ipation, so that they could make a two-fold 
contribution to food security:  on the one hand, by boosting their contribution to food supply 
(for which they must improve their productivity);  and on the other, by promoting and ensuring access 
to local, regional, national and international market s (which would help to generate employment and 
incomes and would contribute to reducing rural poverty and improving access to food).  To achieve 
all these goals it is crucial to promote associative arrangements as a means to access services and to increase their negotiating po wer in the markets. 
14. To achieve food security, climate change  must be taken into consideration.   To different 
extents, American agriculture is threatened by clim ate change, but it also contributes to it, since global 
agriculture generates 30 per cent of greenhouse gases (GHG), according to the University of 
Minnesota.  Moreover, when agricultural activity is not conducted in an environmentally responsible 
and sustainable manner, it results in soil and wa ter pollution and the loss of vegetative cover. 
15. Food availability is threatened by climate variab ility in the short term and climate change in 
the medium and long term.  Changes in temperatur e and rainfall patterns will affect different regions 
and countries to different extents and are expected  to reduce yields, worsen the conditions and quality 
of production, influence the distribution of pests a nd the virulence of diseases that affect crops and 
livestock, impact food storage and distribution, undermine the control of post-harvest diseases, 
and will thus affect the income levels and living co nditions of vulnerable population groups, mainly in 
rural regions. 
16. Therefore mitigation strategies and policies need to reflect a socio-political change of attitude, 
and agricultural production and subsequent processes must adapt to climate change. 
17. Strategy, policies and investment plans for food security:   IICA encourages the adoption 
of comprehensive food security strategies aimed at the following objectives: 
(a) Increase investment in agriculture in orde r to develop scientific, research, innovation 
and extension capabilities. 
(b) 
Develop efficient and transparent agricultural markets. G/AG/GEN/104 
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  (c) Adopt policies and institutional arrangements  to integrate small and medium-scale 
farmers into markets. 
(d) Promote free international trade in food. 
(e) Implement programmes that provide access to food for vulnerable population groups. 
(f) Adapt agricultural activities to climate cha nge and variability and minimize the risks 
posed by these phenomena and volatile agricultural prices. 
(g) Reduce and mitigate the impact of agri cultural activity on the environment and 
promote education programmes in food and nutritional security. 
18. For further information on IICA activ ities in this field, please contact: 
Rafael Trejos Solórzano 
Manager of the IICA Centre for Strate gic Analysis for Agriculture (CAESPA) 
E-mail: rafael.trejos@iica.int Tel.: (+506) 2216-0218 
 
Adriana Campos Azofeifa 
Trade Policy and Negotiations Specialist 
E-mail: adriana.campos@iica.int Tel.: (+506) 2216-0170 
 19. For more information, please visit the IICA website at:  http://www.iica.int . 
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