drought

In Central America, the report found that a total of 7.7 million people in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua “experienced high levels of food insecurity in 2021.

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“Inflation has increased prices for fuel and inputs for farmers and ranchers,” said James Ennis, executive director of Catholic Rural Life. “It’s putting a lot more pressure on (farmers). They are facing some more headwinds than they were in 2018.”

Amid a U.N. warning that a famine is looming in Somalia, U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services is calling for increased humanitarian support in the Horn of Africa country.

According to an Aug. 5 report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the rise in food insecurity brought on by the drought has caused “more than 900,000 people to flee their homes in search of humanitarian assistance since January last year.”

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By April, agencies estimated that nearly 16 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia were in urgent need of food assistance due to the drought and were suffering hunger, severe food shortages and extreme hardships.