Hunger in the Caribbean

The Caribbean region depends on tourism as a main source of revenue. In some territories, 85% of their overall revenue stems from tourism. When this stream of revenue is impacted by natural disasters and now health pandemics – the citizens suffer. Similar to everywhere else in the world, hunger has a negative impact on health, education and the community. While this region has the ability to grow food year round, it relies heavily on imported food. The best of the food grown within the region reaches the restaurants and hotels with what is left being sold in the grocery stores.

The region does not have a sustainable food system in place allowing them to import, store and distribute food within each territory and across the region during disaster and non-disaster times. There are individual entities doing their best to serve the hungry and homeless, however due to lack of communication, their efforts are not in sync and often they are reaching a limited amount of the underserved. The religious entities have the most consistent outreach, however they are operating from a small portion of what is collected from their membership.

The territories do support each other in times of crises, however they do not have a system in place for ongoing support of each other leading all to zero hunger. Food insecurity in the Caribbean region increased from 22 percent in 2014 to 31 percent today. 7 million of the 27 million Caribbean population struggle with food insecurity. These numbers increased at least 50 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of food insecure Caribbean citizens also increases on the other side of the natural disasters caused by hurricanes.