Emerging, and old, dilemmas for food security in Latin America

• Author: Juan Felipe Espinosa‐Cristia,Jorge Feregrino,Pablo Isla
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1999
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Date: 01 August 2019

ACADEMIC PAPER

Emerging, and old, dilemmas for food security in Latin America

Juan Felipe Espinosa-Cristia

1

| Jorge Feregrino

2

| Pablo Isla

3

1

Facultad de Economía y Negocios,

Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello, Santiago,

Chile

2

FES Acatlán, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

3

Departamento de Ingeniería Comercial,

Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María,

Valparaíso, Chile

Correspondence

Pablo Isla, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa

María, Valparaíso, Chile.

Email: pablo.isla@usm.cl

Funding information

Juan Espinosa research is funded by

FONDECYT, Grant/Award Number: 1190543;

Doing Laboratory Studies in Chile: Re-engaging

Science in the Making

The present text offers a summary of some of the crucial food security problems in

Latin American (LA) countries. This region, like many others in the globe, confronts

such as food safety difficulties. The summary offers also an analysis of some techno-

logically based solutions for LA food security issues. As a general call, the present

review article calls for a collaborative and transdisciplinary approach to think deeper

about how to solve food security problems, putting the focus on enabling technolo-

gies within a context of social, market, and global trends to achieve food and nutri-

tional security. The review is positioned far from techno-optimisms and, at the same

time, away from purely economic-based solutions. Conversely, this review embraces

the whole complexity that brings economy-nature-technology triad. Embracing such

complex relationships between technology, nature and the socio-economy aspects of

food security LA issues. Such complexity also triggers a need for a solution that con-

siders a renewed approach to sustainability in the whole food value chain from pro-

duction to consumption. Sustainability in the value chain opens up a much-needed

approach to LA food security that broadens, and refresh, our understanding of this

fundamental socio-economic and technical phenomena.

1|INTRODUCTION

Latin American (LA) countries, as many others in the globe, confront

food security problems. The aim of this article is to review major LA

food security issues and its connection with the changing status of its

related technologies. Although technologies present opportunities to

solve LA food security problems, they also carry the risk of aggravat-

ing disparities between high-income countries and countries where

poverty and hunger permeate huge parts of their population. Technol-

ogy is not a “panacea.”Technology needs not only to be funded but

also to be accepted and adopted by less developed countries, in order

to cope with food security problems. LA countries need to sort their

food security problems looking for solutions funded, accepted, and

adopted locally from a set of new technologies that are affecting LA

food chains.

In this review, food security is used in close connection with some

problems such as “access to food, access to land, access to water, sup-

ply, food crises, Human Rights, famine and starvation, malnutrition,

globalization, rural and urban poverty, health safety, undernutrition,

[and] sovereignty”(Dutilleul, 2014). Therefore, this text will be mainly

focus on problems about access to food and any problem related with

food chains that are present in LA countries. Additionally, as it was

defined at the World Food Summit, “Food security exists when all

people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient,

safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food prefer-

ences for an active and healthy life”(Food and Agriculture Organiza-

tion [FAO], 1996). In consequence, food security is a complex

construct that demands to be analyzed confronting its several edges

and as an integrated whole.

General problems related with LA food security are clearly con-

nected with issues about income gap in food production capacities

and the quality of the expenditure in food that many countries pres-

ented (FAO, 2017). In fact, some less developed LA countries confront

problems about their subsistence agriculture; therefore, they are inca-

pable to self-produce enough food for their family–local consumption

(Schneider & Cassol, 2014). Second, and equally important, problems

related with huge threats such as climate change are definitely con-

necting microproblem and macroproblem in the field of subsistence

agriculture (Cole, Augustin, Robertson, & Manners, 2018). In conse-

quence, problems about production capacity and the quality of

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1999

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https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1999