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News > Honduras

Famine Spreads to 10th Honduran Community amid Ongoing Drought

  • A farmer shows a cob of corn, parched by drought.

    A farmer shows a cob of corn, parched by drought. | Photo: EFE

Published 18 August 2015
Opinion

Months without rain in Central America is wreaking havoc on Honduran farmers and creating a dire food insecurity situation in over 100 communities.

A community in one of the of the poorest regions in western Honduras declared a famine on Monday, bringing the total to 10 Honduran municipalities experiencing famine, due to the ongoing drought parching Central America and the Caribbean.

“We have decided, with the people, to declare a total emergency, because we have lost 60 percent of our crop production,” said Edgar Murillo, mayor of the Lepaera community in the western department of Lempira, stressing the major impact and damage caused by the lack of rain.

In the face of major crop failure of basic staple grains, such as corn and beans, local authorities in Lepaera called on the government and the United Nations to step in to aid the community amid the crisis of food security.

A woman and her son walk through their drought-affected plot in the southern department of Valle, Honduras, Aug. 13, 2015. I Photo: Reuters

In Lepaera alone, farmers collectively have lost more than US$800,000 in beans and corn crops, and another estimated US$6 million in coffee production.

The community, one of close to 150 Honduran municipalities hard hit by drought, joins nine other communities that have already declared a state of famine in recent weeks in the western departments of Copan, Santa Barbara, and La Paz.

RELATED: Latin America's Future Tied to Sustainable, Subsistence Farming

Aside from losses in basic grains crops, ranchers and sugarcane producers have also felt the effects of parched soils and high heat, Honduras’ El Heraldo reported.

While Honduras’ southern and western agricultural zones often deal with heatwave conditions, this year’s extended lack of rain has made for much drier soils than usual. Forecasts project a difficult year for farmers with drought conditions expected to continue into next year.

The harsh droughts threaten the already fragile food security in Central America, where 25 percent of the population suffer malnutrition, according to U.N. statistics.

“Honduras, municipalities affected by drought, as of August 5, 2015.” 81 municipalities severly affected, 65 moderately affected.

In Honduras, one in four children suffer chronic malnutrition, and 75 percent of the rural population, where subsistence farming is an important livelihood, lives in extreme poverty. The drought crisis exacerbates these difficult circumstances in the third poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean, where some 1.5 million people already face hunger, according the U.N. World Food Programme.

In the face of massive crop failure and heightened food insecurity, the Honduran government has increased the budget to tackle famine on a national level by 50 percent this year, Honduras’ Diario La Prensa reported.

Small farmers in Central America’s “dry corridor” stretching from Panama to Guatemala, including parts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, are hardest hit by Central America’s dry spell, brought on by a particularly strong El Nino climatic effect this year.

El Nino, a climatic phenomenon originating in the Pacific Ocean that can disrupt regular weather patterns and trigger floods, droughts, and other extreme conditions around the world.

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