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Section 3: Trade-offs and Priorities
3.1 WATER AND FOOD
Latin America’s abundance of arable land and water supports vast agricultural production. Agriculture is the largest user of
water in the region, primarily through rainfall green water: only 13 of arable land and permanent crops is irrigated
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. This dependence on rain-fed agriculture, while less water and
energy intensive than irrigated systems, has trade-offs in terms of lower productivity and greater vulnerability to drought.
Food Security
Latin America’s agricultural production plays an important role in supporting global food security through the export of agricultural
commodities, and will have a vital role to play in meeting future global demand. The region is not only exporting food, but also
‘virtual water’ embedded in agricultural commodities. In 2007, South America was estimated to virtually export 178 km
3
a year to Asia and Europe, around 17 of the water used for foo d
production in the region
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. Despite this large-scale production and export of agricultural
commodities, an estimated 37 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean 6.1 of the population suffer from hunger.
This is a particular challenge in Haiti, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, where a high proportion of the population are undernourished
50, 19.5 and 16.8 respectively. Chronic undernourishment is also higher among indigenous peoples and is double that of
non-indigenous communities in Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru. However, LAC is the only region globally to have achieved the
Millennium Development Goal target to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2015
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.
Deforestation
The expansion of agricultural land has gone hand in hand with deforestation – in Latin America around 70 of deforestation is
driven by commercial agriculture, mainly oilseed crop cultivation and cattle ranching
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. The resulting loss of ecosystem services, including rainfall recycling, water regulation and puriication,
moderation of extreme events, and climate regulation has local and regional impacts on water security. Amazonia recycles and
exports moisture through ‘lying rivers’ thousands of kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean to the South of the continent, including
to the economic heartlands of the La Plata Basin, which generates 70 of the GDP of the 5 countries that share the basin
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