The numbers are staggering. According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), published in August 2022, half of Peru's population, or 16.6 million people, is moderately food insecure. And more than one in five – 6.8 million – are severely food insecure, meaning they go without food for an entire day or even several days. This puts Peru ahead of Argentina and Venezuela.
Hunger is once again a problem in the country, and the phenomenon is not unrelated to the mass protest movements which have flared up in Peru since its president, Pedro Castillo, was impeached. On top of calls for fresh elections, for the departure of the president, Dina Boluarte, and for the dissolution of Congress, are welfare demands. "We have nothing; we are suffering from hunger," said Felicia Mamani, a young farmer from the Altiplano region, who came to demonstrate in Lima. "They buy a liter of milk from us for 80 cents and they [the multinationals, in Lima] resell it for five times the price."
"The little I earn, I spend on food," said Sandra Lopez, a substitute teacher we met in the giant covered market's noisy alleys, in the popular district of San Juan de Miraflores, south Lima. Once a week, she travels the 10 or so kilometers from her home, in the hope of saving a bit of money in this place considered to be cheap: "Where I live, things cost too much. The price of a potato has tripled in recent months," she said. "One costs 6 soles [€1.40]."
Around her, enormous carcasses of animals hang from hooks, ready to be cut up. The stalls overflow with all that Peru has to offer in fresh produce: exotic fruits, all kinds of vegetables, poultry in its thousands, and whole alleys sprawling with the Peruvian coast's diverse array of fish. This abundance of food sits uncomfortably with the return of hunger.
Inequality
"This is the great paradox of a country that has enough to feed its population," said Mariana Escobar, director of FAO Peru. "Peru is a net producer of food and one of the great agricultural exporting powers in the region, along with Argentina and Brazil."
The problem is not the availability of food, but its economic access, in a context of generalized inflation (8.46% in 2022) and the population's increasing poverty. In addition to the increase in food and gasoline prices, which is among the most expensive in the region, and the shortage of fertilizers linked to the war in Ukraine, Peru also suffers from certain structural issues.
"There is a problem of inequality associated with informal work: Eight out of 10 Peruvians work in the black economy," FAO Peru's director explained. What's more, "Latin America has been the region most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in socio-economic terms, and Peru first and foremost. The country has become as poor as it was 10 years ago". According to her, poverty levels are explained by the lack of social protection. "Millions of people were lifted out of poverty [in the 2000s] and joined the middle classes, while remaining very vulnerable to the first crisis. That's the big flaw in the 'economic miracle' policy of the early 2000s."
You have 56.95% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.