Data or statistical facts on the situation and perspectives of agri-food systems and the impact of policies
4 Central American countries, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, contain extensive areas of the Dry Corridor exposed to prolonged droughts and extreme rainfall associated with El Niño.
4 weeks without rainfall were enough to destroy staple crop plantings in agricultural communities in Guatemala and El Salvador, worsening food insecurity risks.
10.5 million people live in the Central American Dry Corridor and depend mainly on subsistence maize and bean farming, which is highly vulnerable to El Niño.
More than 100,000 people in 250 rural communities benefited from anticipatory actions implemented in nine countries during the 2023-2024 El Niño event, with increases of up to 40% in maize and bean production in some Central American countries.
26% of climate disaster damages in LAC are absorbed by the agricultural sector on average, rising to 82% during droughts; equatorial Pacific warming also severely impacts Caribbean coastal fisheries (Castellanos, 2026).
Central America and the Caribbean should contribute 7% of the necessary spending to cover their gaps in food systems (OECD, 2024).
The gaps in food systems in Central America and the Caribbean are between 23,000 and 2,000 million USD (OECD, 2024).
Approximately 9,000 years has the domestication process of Teosinte from Mexico and Central America until becoming the corn we know today, thanks to the systematic selection work by Mesoamerican indigenous peoples (Velásquez, A., 2025).
190 thousand million metric tons annually reach the volume of international corn trade, a cereal that evolved from teosinte thanks to domestication by the Aztecs and other indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America (Velásquez, A., 2025).
23,000 million colones in coffee and 1,982 million in rice is the economic impact of the recent rains in Costa Rica (La Nación, 2024).
