Latin America and the Caribbean: Strategies to Fight Hidden Hunger

The Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region has shown significant progress in the decline of hunger and malnutrition in the last decade. However, besides the food availability, the region is still affected by undernourishment, and even more worryingly it is witnessing increasing prevalence of the "double burden" in malnutrition by having a coincidence in the prevalence of undernourishment as insufficient calorie intake and overweight/obesity as excess body fat. The governments in the LAC region recognize the problem and have many nutrition-related and nutrition-sensitive policies in place. This paper proposes a model that intends to enrich the wide gamma of nutrition-sensitive policies and add value to the holistic and sustainable approach in eradicating hidden hunger. The community-based nutrition strategy model consists of 4 main strategies: (1) diversification of agricultural production; (2) training and technical assistance; (3) identification and support of local producers' organizations and (4) supporting the establishment of agro-industry. It considers education as a core cross-cutting strategy and contemplates education in nutrition, sanitation, finance, and sustainable agriculture. The model includes education, training, technical assistance, and infrastructure in its interventions aiming at the improvement of the human, physical, social, and natural capital in the community. It also contemplates baseline assessment of wide gamma of indicators and continuous monitoring and evaluation which would guarantee its successful implementation and necessary adaptation to reach the desired objectives. The model regards reaching dietary diversity as its primary objective but considers income generation as another important element. As such it incorporates nutrition strategies as a part of a wider rural development strategy and suggests a sustainable approach to building healthy and resilient communities.