Non-extensive agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean: an analysis of family farming in Central America

This working paper studies the relationship between climate change (CC) and agricultural and livestock activities in Central American countries, with special emphasis on family farming systems. Located between two oceans, Central America is particularly exposed to climate variability. In recent years it has been so strongly affected by droughts, hurricanes and the El Niño phenomenon that the proliferation of extreme events from 1993 to 2012 led Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua to be among the 10 countries considered most at risk in the global climate risk index (Kreft, Eckstein et al., 2013). Within the region, one of the groups most vulnerable to climate change are family farmers, whose main activity is subsistence agriculture, 90% of whose production depends on rainfall (Wani et al., 2009). At the same time, rising temperatures, over the last 50 years the average temperature has increased by approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius (ECLAC/CAD-SICA/UKAID/DANIDA, 2011), reduces the yield of staple crops in the region (Hannah et al., 2017), such as maize and beans, which jeopardizes the food security of the most vulnerable households.