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Central America & Caribbean

PSI score 40.8/100DependentRank 39 of 43

Covers: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis

Summary

Central America and the Caribbean rely on feed imported from a narrow set of suppliers, despite a base of locally grown mainland staples. Mainland farms grow maize, beans and eggs, but the wider region produces only about 56 per cent of the protein available to its people.⁠[1, 4, 11] Poultry is a particular pressure point. Farms rely on imported grain and meal to raise chicken locally: home-grown maize covers only 36 per cent of use, and the United States supplies 95.1 per cent of imported soybean meal.⁠[1, 3] A disruption to that trade would raise the cost of a food many households depend on, even where the chicken itself is raised nearby.

The Caribbean islands have still less room to substitute local production. Across the seven smallest states, domestic output covers only 18 per cent of protein supply, and several members import virtually all their cereals.⁠[1, 2] They pay for those imports through tourism and other earnings that can fall during a shock.⁠[2, 8] The region also contains acute hunger alongside these trade risks: in Haiti, 52 per cent of the population assessed for March to June 2026 was projected to face crisis-level hunger or worse.⁠[21, 22] The mainland's farm base gives some protection, but feed dependence and the islands' import bills leave access exposed to prices and lost income.

The protein system

The region has two food systems. Central America grows much of its own food on a base of maize and beans. In 2023 it produced 4.15 million tonnes of maize, 84 per cent of its dry beans and 98 per cent of its eggs, and 60 per cent of the protein it uses.⁠[1, 4] The Caribbean buys most of its food. The larger islands produce half the protein they use and the seven smallest states 18 per cent, and six members import all their cereals.⁠[1, 2]

Protein supply varies widely, from 45.9 grams per person per day in Haiti to 115.4 in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The world average is 92.5.⁠[2] Feed-intensive foods such as chicken supply 35.6 per cent of the region's protein and fish only 3.3 per cent.⁠[1] Livestock eat 60 per cent of the region's maize, and two-thirds of that maize is imported.⁠[1] In practice, much of the region's animal protein is imported grain turned into chicken at home.

The money to pay for imports comes from outside farming. Food imports equal 661 per cent of Antigua and Barbuda's merchandise exports and 149 per cent of Haiti's.⁠[2] The islands pay with tourism earnings. The mainland relies on money sent home by migrants, which equals 30.1 per cent of GDP in Honduras.⁠[8] Both sources of income can fall in a shock.

Durable domestic capacity:

Output is falling in several of the region's main farming countries. Cuba has 26 per cent of the region's arable land and the most per person. Its rice output fell from 461,000 tonnes in 2018 to 84,000 in 2024, and its pig meat from 236,000 to 17,000 tonnes.⁠[4] Rice output fell 64 per cent in Costa Rica and 61 per cent in Honduras over the same period.⁠[4] In Haiti, gangs control the Artibonite valley, the main rice area. By March to June 2026, 52 per cent of the people assessed were projected to face crisis-level hunger or worse, more than 1.8 million of them at emergency level.⁠[21, 22]

The Caribbean has little to spare: 16.7 per cent of people are undernourished, and protein supply falls as low as 45.9 grams a day in Haiti.⁠[2] Fish offer little relief: 41 per cent of assessed stocks in the western central Atlantic are overfished.⁠[40] Caribbean fisheries land 93,000 tonnes and fish farms produce 20,000 tonnes, for 39.9 million people.⁠[7]

Resource headroom:

The mainland and the islands have very different resources. Mainland Central America has some of the best-watered farmland in the world, with 37,891 cubic metres of renewable freshwater per person a year in Belize and 23,209 in Nicaragua.⁠[9] The islands are the opposite: 283 cubic metres in Barbados and 560 in Antigua and Barbuda.⁠[9] Of ten English-speaking Caribbean island states, only four have enough water to count as water secure, and Grenada and Saint Lucia are on the line.⁠[42] Mainland farms also get a fair share of bank lending. In Panama they get more than farming's share of the economy, and in Belize, Costa Rica and Nicaragua between 70 and 85 per cent of it. In the small islands of the Eastern Caribbean, farm lending is close to nil.⁠[63]

Cuba has land lying idle, but no means to farm it. Official figures for 2017 show only 43 per cent of its farmland under cultivation, leaving 57 per cent of roughly 6.3 million hectares unused.⁠[48] Cuba lacks the money, machinery and imported inputs to bring it back. Fertiliser imports have fallen from US$75 million to US$43-44 million, herbicide imports are down 80 per cent, crop-spraying aircraft no longer fly and nitrogen use is down to 5,000 tonnes.⁠[5, 17] Rice output has fallen 82 per cent and pig meat 93 per cent since 2018.⁠[4]

Elsewhere, almost nothing is irrigated. Most members irrigate less than 4 per cent of their arable land, and the regional share has not changed in twenty years, at 3.7 per cent in 2000-2002 and 3.6 per cent in 2021-2023.⁠[2, 6] A dry spell in the growing season therefore hits harvests directly. Cropland and arable land per person have fallen 25 to 31 per cent since 2000 as the population grew on a roughly fixed land base. Nicaragua's arable land has fallen 21.6 per cent since its last farm census.⁠[6, 11]

Room to expand is shrinking. Cattle ranching is pushing into forest. CARICOM's '25 by 2025' plan aimed to cut the region's food import bill by a quarter. Food production rose about 24 per cent, but the target was missed and moved to 2030.⁠[27, 28] In 2025, dry spells delayed the first planting in the Dry Corridor by up to 40 days,⁠[25] and El Niño is expected to bring below-normal rain into January 2027.⁠[23] Drought is also hitting shipping: the Panama Canal cut the maximum draft for its largest ships three times in 2026, from 50.0 feet to 48.5 feet by 15 August.⁠[55]

The coast is under pressure too. The University of South Florida estimated 38 million tonnes of sargassum seaweed across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf in July 2025, the largest amount since satellite records began in 2011.⁠[43]

Import exposure:

The region imports about 44 per cent of its protein, and the seven smallest island states about 82 per cent.⁠[1] The bigger risk is reliance on one supplier. The United States provides 95.1 per cent of the region's imported soybean meal.⁠[3] Cuba bought 239,400 tonnes of American chicken in 2024, despite the US embargo,⁠[3] and the Dominican Republic alone bought US$2.2 billion of American farm goods.⁠[15]

That reliance carries political risk. A 1 per cent US tax on cash remittances took effect on 1 January 2026, cutting into an important source of household income in several members.⁠[37, 38]

There are some alternatives, mostly on the mainland. Food reaches the region without passing through major chokepoints, and the Panama Canal kept up 35 transits a day through the Hormuz crisis, 5.2 per cent more than a year earlier.⁠[46] The Dominican Republic switched 75 per cent of its maize imports to Brazil. Guyanese rice supplies 52 to 97 per cent of Eastern Caribbean needs. Central America buys 26.7 per cent of its food imports from within the region, against 9.2 per cent for the Caribbean.⁠[3]

Upstream dependence:

Livestock depend on imported feed. The region imported 2.05 million tonnes of soybean meal, 95.1 per cent of it from one country, and 8.56 million tonnes of maize. Home-grown maize meets only 36 per cent of use.⁠[1, 3]

Fertiliser production is concentrated in one member. Trinidad and Tobago is a major nitrogen exporter, while Central America produced no nitrogen, phosphate or potash in 2024.⁠[5, 33] The 2026 price rise added pressure: the World Bank's fertiliser index rose more than 12 per cent in the first quarter, and urea passed US$850 a tonne in April.⁠[35]

Access and affordability:

In 2023–24, about 43 per cent of people across the 12 members with figures, home to 79 per cent of the region's people.⁠[59] FAO puts the Caribbean share at 50 per cent in 2022.⁠[41] Haiti has the highest rate at 87.9 per cent. Saint Lucia has the lowest at 7.4 per cent: it grows little food, but tourism wages help households afford imports.⁠[59]

Hunger is concentrated in a few places. is 5.4 per cent in Central America, 16.7 per cent in the Caribbean and 51.4 per cent in Haiti.⁠[2] Guatemala has the highest in the Americas, at 44.6 to 46.5 per cent of children under five, against 4.6 to 6.7 per cent in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.⁠[2, 47, 60] Prices add to the strain. Caribbean food prices have risen 55 to 60 per cent since 2018,⁠[36] and Honduran white maize was 40 per cent dearer in January 2026 than a year earlier.⁠[24] In Haiti, gangs block roads in the Artibonite, so food cannot get through at all.⁠[21] On the small islands, hurricanes can cut off markets for weeks.⁠[12, 18]

On the mainland, world price rises were only partly passed on. In 2021–22, Guatemala's food prices rose 9.3 per cent while world prices in dollars rose 14.9 per cent.⁠[64] The quetzal barely moved against the dollar, so local market conditions explain the smaller rise. Haiti was different: the gourde fell 29.6 per cent and food prices rose 35.5 per cent, driven by the currency.⁠[65]

The island economies felt world prices more directly. Food prices rose 12.7 per cent in Jamaica and 11.1 per cent in the Dominican Republic, close to the world rise, because both rely almost entirely on imported grain and dollar-priced freight.⁠[66] Prices stayed high after world prices fell. Between March 2022 and March 2026, food prices rose 21.2 per cent in Guatemala and 30.3 per cent in Honduras, while the FAO Food Price Index fell 19.7 per cent.⁠[66, 67] In 2025, wholesale black beans in Guatemala varied by 16.7 per cent across the year. At the 2026 agricultural minimum wage of GTQ 119.21 a day, a kilogram of beans at the June 2026 price of GTQ 11.58 costs about 0.78 hours of work.⁠[68, 69]

Shock endurance:

Storms are frequent and food reserves are small. Hurricane Melissa caused US$8.8 billion of damage in Jamaica in October 2025, equal to 41 per cent of its 2024 GDP.⁠[12] An insurance payout of US$91.9 million covered only a small part of that.⁠[32] A storm can damage farms, roads and incomes at once, so more food must be bought abroad just when there is less money to pay for it.

Public stocks are small. Honduras's bean reserve of about 45,000 quintals, roughly 2,000 tonnes, is the largest documented strategic reserve in the region.⁠[49] Many islands rely on imported staples paid for by tourism.⁠[2, 8] After a disaster, what protects them is keeping ports, supply contracts and income support working. A few small stores of grain or beans cannot cover a region-wide shortage.

Trajectory

Progress is slow. CARICOM missed its target to cut the regional food import bill, over US$6 billion, by a quarter by 2025, and has moved it to 2030, though food production rose about 24 per cent between 2022 and late 2024.⁠[27, 28] Guyana's Tacama savannah programme, meant to grow maize and soy for feed within the region, planted 12,000 acres in 2024 against a target of 25,000 acres twice a year.⁠[31, 58] Two smaller steps help. A CARICOM cargo ferry pilot using Trinidad and Tobago's Galleons Passage aims to cut the shipping costs that keep Caribbean trade within the region at 9.2 per cent of food imports.⁠[3, 30] A CARICOM dashboard now tracks food supplies across 11 states in real time, giving early warning in a region with few reserves.⁠[29]

Conditions in 2026 work against all three. Higher energy and fertiliser prices hit quickly in a region that imports nearly all its fuel.⁠[36] The remittance tax cuts into households' main buffer.⁠[37] A quieter hurricane season is forecast, but El Niño raises the risk of drought in the Dry Corridor and low water in the Panama Canal.⁠[44, 46] Caribbean shipping also pays higher war-risk insurance after the January 2026 operation in Venezuela.⁠[50] What would help most is a regional supply of feed grain under long-term contracts, and a way to get Trinidad's nitrogen to CARICOM farmers. Disaster insurance lowers the cost of shocks, but it does not change what the region depends on.

Country notes

Guatemala. The largest maize producer, at 2.26 million tonnes, yet it imports 2 million.⁠[3, 4] Child stunting is the highest in the Americas, at 44.6 per cent on the 2024 modelled estimate and 46.5 per cent in the 2014-2015 national survey.⁠[2, 47] Between 2.0 and 2.49 million people need food assistance in 2026.⁠[23]

Honduras. The United States supplied 99.7 per cent of maize imports and all soybean meal imports in 2024.⁠[3] The 2023-24 collapse in shrimp exports removed an earner that paid for food.⁠[51]

El Salvador. Produces 50 per cent of the protein it uses, and buys 45.5 per cent of its food imports from within the region.⁠[1, 3]

Nicaragua. Produces 70 per cent of its protein and exported 116,000 tonnes of beef, the region's only significant protein exporter. Undernourishment, at 17.3 per cent, is the highest in Central America.⁠[1, 2, 3]

Costa Rica. Produces 80 per cent of its animal protein but only 56 per cent of its total protein. It grows 8,000 tonnes of maize and imports 1.07 million.⁠[1, 3, 4]

Panama. Buys 99.8 per cent of its maize from one supplier, the most concentrated in the region.⁠[3] The canal is now limited by water: the 2023-24 drought cut daily transits from 34 to 36 to 24,⁠[45] and the maximum draft for its largest ships fell in three steps in 2026 to 48.5 feet.⁠[55, 46]

Belize. Imports only 13.2 per cent of its cereals, the lowest share in the region, and has the most freshwater per person.⁠[2, 9]

Cuba. Rice output is down 82 per cent since 2018 and nitrogen use has fallen to 5,000 tonnes. In 2017, the latest official figure, 57 per cent of farmland lay uncultivated.⁠[4, 5, 48, 53] Up to 37.8 per cent of people live on fewer than 2,100 calories a day, despite the region's largest area of arable land.⁠[17]

Dominican Republic. The strongest of the large Caribbean members, and the only one to switch a major feed import to a new supplier, moving 75 per cent of its maize purchases to Brazil.⁠[3] Home-grown maize covers under 5 per cent of use.⁠[16]

Haiti. Protein supply is 45.9 grams per person per day, and 5.83 million people were projected to face crisis-level hunger or worse between March and June 2026.⁠[2, 21] Moderate or severe food insecurity affects 86.7 per cent of people.⁠[22]

Jamaica. Hurricane Melissa caused US$8.8 billion of damage against an insurance payout of US$91.9 million.⁠[12, 32] Chicken is 84 per cent home-produced, but on imported grain.⁠[3, 52]

Trinidad and Tobago. The world's largest ammonia exporter, with 15 to 20 per cent of the seaborne market, yet it imports all its cereals and its gas supply is declining.⁠[1, 2, 33, 34]

The Bahamas. Buys 85.5 per cent of its food from the United States, the most concentrated in the region, and produces 15 per cent of its protein.⁠[1, 2, 3]

Barbados. Renewable freshwater is 283 cubic metres per person, below the absolute-scarcity line, and irrigation covers 12.6 per cent of arable land.⁠[2, 9] Disaster clauses in its government debt and the Connect Caribe ferry venture help the region respond to storms.⁠[30]

Saint Lucia. Produces 16 per cent of its protein on the region's smallest arable area per person, 0.015 hectares, and relies on one supplier for animal protein.⁠[1, 3, 6]

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The highest protein supply in the region, 115.4 grams per person per day, but it produces only 7 per cent of its animal protein.⁠[1, 2] Hurricane Beryl destroyed 98 per cent of the banana crop.⁠[19]

Grenada. Hit hardest by Hurricane Beryl, with damage of 16.5 per cent of GDP,⁠[18] yet it buys from more suppliers than most small islands and has the best trend in food insecurity in the Eastern Caribbean.⁠[2, 3]

Antigua and Barbuda. Produces 6 per cent of its protein, and food imports equal 661 per cent of merchandise exports.⁠[1, 2, 9]

Dominica. Buys 37.2 per cent of its food imports from within the region, the highest share in the Caribbean.⁠[3]

Saint Kitts and Nevis. Produces 3 per cent of its protein and almost none of its animal protein. Renewable freshwater is 514 cubic metres per person, close to the scarcity line of 500.⁠[1, 2, 9]

Sources (69)
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  10. GNI per capita, PPP (current international $), NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD, World Bank World Development Indicators (2026 (data 2025))
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  12. World Bank, IDB estimate Hurricane Melissa damage to Jamaica totals all-time high of US$8.8 billion, World Bank (2025)
  13. Counting the Cost: Impact of Hurricane Melissa on the Agricultural Sector in Jamaica (JM2025-0010), USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  14. Agriculture sustains $29.5 billion in damage from Hurricane Melissa (Minister Floyd Green's parliamentary statement), Jamaica Observer (2025)
  15. United States Agricultural Exports to the Dominican Republic Reach a New All-Time Record in 2024 (DR2025-0002), USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
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  20. GIEWS Country Brief: The Republic of Cuba, 17 December 2024, FAO Global Information and Early Warning System (2024)
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  29. CARICOM, World Food Programme Introduce New Caribbean Food Security Tracker, CARICOM Secretariat / WFP (2025)
  30. CARICOM moves towards ferry trial within months as cargo cost-cruncher, Barbados Today (2026)
  31. How hinterland farming is powering Guyana's food security drive (Tacama savannah corn and soya), Democracy Guyana (2026)
  32. CCRIF Provides US$91.9 Million in Payouts to Jamaica Following Hurricane Melissa, CCRIF SPC (2025)
  33. Trinidad and Tobago: future production pathways for the world's largest ammonia exporter, Ammonia Energy Association (2024)
  34. Natural gas utilization in Trinidad and Tobago, Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago (2025)
  35. Fertilizer prices surge as Strait of Hormuz disruptions tighten supplies, World Bank Data Blog (2026)
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  58. Guyana cultivated 12,000 acres of corn and soya in 2024, Ministry of Agriculture, Guyana (2024)
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Data gaps

Cuba has not reported food-balance data to the UN since 2019, so its protein self-sufficiency figure predates later production collapse and is likely overstated; the 95.3 grams of protein per person per day is also a pre-collapse value, and its latest land-use figure is from 2017. Eight of the region's twenty countries, Cuba among them, have no diet-affordability data at all; the region's 43 per cent unaffordability figure is weighted across the twelve that do report, and Cuba's position is probably worse than that figure. Stunting readings range from a 2012 survey in Nicaragua to 2019 in Cuba, some over a decade old. Saint Kitts and Nevis' food-insecurity estimate is from 2019-2021; it should not be read as a current prevalence measure. Its trade-source profile is based on available mirror records rather than a national trade submission. Belize does not submit to the FAOSTAT trade matrix, so its supplier concentration cannot be compared; its capture-fisheries total includes flag-state catches attributed to an open registry rather than domestic supply. Saint Lucia also lacks a FAOSTAT trade-matrix submission, and its latest food-insecurity estimate is from 2016-2018.

About this assessment

2026 edition.

Written by Felix Collins and Alex Aldridge. Published by Full Circle Biotech.

Methodology reviewed by an independent expert panel.