La Jornada: They warn about a slowdown in agri-food productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean are going through a “slowdown” in agri-food productivity, in an environment marked by higher production costs, financial restrictions, climate change and low economic growth, warned the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

These factors especially affect small farmers, so faced with this scenario, international organizations warned that the region needs a new financial architecture for agriculture, based on guarantees, agricultural insurance, climate financing and green bonds to reverse the negative trend.

In the virtual presentation of the report Outlook for agriculture and rural development in the Americas 2025-2026René Orellana Halkyer, FAO regional representative, pointed out that nearly 16 million small farms, more than 80 percent of the regional total, face severe limitations in access to land, technology, financing and markets, and only 15 percent of producers have access to formal credit.

He explained that according to the report, in the recent decade Latin American agriculture only increased its capacity to produce more using the same resources by 5 percent. Furthermore, around 75 percent of the recent growth in agricultural production did not come from improvements in productivity or innovation, but from the expansion of cultivated area and the intensive use of fertilizers and agrochemicals.

Given this, Orellana called to strengthen the production of biofertilizers and other bioinputs that allow reducing costs and increasing the sustainability of agricultural activity.

Joaquín Arias, coordinator of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, stressed that productivity must become the axis of agri-food transformation. He warned that the sector is currently growing at a rate of just 0.7 percent annually, when it should expand around 2 percent to respond to the needs of the region.

For his part, José Manuel Salazar, executive secretary of ECLAC, pointed out that agriculture does not escape the productivity crisis that affects all of Latin America and the Caribbean, and although the sector has enormous capacity and strategic position in world markets, “it faces a worrying slowdown in productivity.”

He recalled that between 2015 and 2024, the regional economy registered an average growth of just one percent annually. This is, he added, a rate even lower than the 2 percent reported during the so-called “lost decade” of the 1980s.

The report identifies “six bottlenecks” that explain the stagnation of agricultural productivity: structural heterogeneity, technological gaps, financing difficulties, territorial and digital inequalities and limitations in access to markets.