The protein system
Chile had 105.1 grams of protein per person per day in 2023, from a diet that includes poultry, pork, beef and seafood.[4, 5] It produced about 1.17 million tonnes of salmon and trout in 2025, and salmon exports earned USD 6.549 billion.[3, 16] Salmon farms are concentrated in the southern fjords, where one outbreak of disease or harmful algae can hit a large share of output.[3, 12]
Meat on land works differently. Pork and poultry farms roughly meet domestic demand, while imports supply around 70 per cent of beef.[2] Much of the feed behind that meat is bought abroad. Imports supply about 79 per cent of maize, and Chile imported more than a million tonnes of soybean meal in 2024.[1, 9] Argentina supplied 85.6 per cent of maize imports that year, and maize stocks were projected to cover only about 15 days of use.[1, 9]
Chile does have some farm inputs of its own. It exported far more fishmeal than it imported in 2024, and it mines potash and nitrate for fertiliser.[9, 28] Even so, imported maize and soybean meal tie the cost and scale of its chicken and pork to harvests elsewhere. Neighbouring suppliers are close enough for Chile to switch between them, but a drought across several of them would limit that option.[1, 9]
Durable domestic capacity:
Chile produces far more seafood than it eats. Its roughly 3.5 million tonnes of fish and shellfish a year would on its own meet the protein needs of its 19.9 million people,[3, 6, 7, 10] and pork and poultry output matches or exceeds demand.[2] But it imports most of its beef and the maize that feeds its livestock.
Land, water and animal disease threaten future output. The wild catch fell 61 per cent from 4,738,165 tonnes in 2005 to 1,826,603 tonnes in 2016. At 2,527,787 tonnes in 2024 it is still 47 per cent below 2005. Leaving out seaweed, the fall to 2016 was 65 per cent.[7] The fisheries agency's March 2026 report found 6 of the 25 fisheries with updated status overfished and 4 depleted, two-fifths of the total, rising to 46 per cent across all 28 fisheries it reports.[19] Only 1.89 per cent of Chile's land is arable, so it cannot grow much more of its own grain.[10]
Chile's surplus seafood comes mainly from salmon farms in the fjords and islands of three southern regions. An algal bloom in early 2016 wiped out around 12 per cent of a year's salmon output in two weeks.[12] That concentration leaves exports exposed to local disease and environmental shocks.
Resource headroom:
Chile's salmon, pork and poultry all rely on bought-in feed. Maize makes up about 90 per cent of feed, and fishmeal and fish oil are in short supply worldwide: fish farming already uses 87 per cent of the world's fishmeal and 74 per cent of its fish oil.[1, 2, 15]
Land and water limit expansion. Nationally Chile uses 9 per cent of its available water, but its main farming region has been short of water for decades, and groundwater pumping rose 383 per cent between 1997 and 2022.[11, 20, 21] Arable land fell 22.5 per cent from 2000 to 2024, while the irrigated area barely changed.[47]
Import exposure:
Chile exports far more protein than it imports and faces almost no risk from sea chokepoints, but it buys from very few suppliers. Food made up 22.7 per cent of its merchandise exports in 2025 and 11.6 per cent of its imports, and fisheries and fish farms earned USD 7,664.9 million in the ten months to October 2025.[10, 18]
Its imports come from a short list. Maize came 85.6 per cent from Argentina and 10.1 per cent from Paraguay. Soybean meal came 48.4 per cent from Argentina, 34.3 per cent from Paraguay, 10.1 per cent from Bolivia and 6.5 per cent from Brazil.[9, 23] Beef came 48.2 per cent from Paraguay, 40.3 per cent from Brazil and 8.4 per cent from Argentina, 97 per cent from three suppliers.[2] Imports supply 79 per cent of maize, 53 per cent of wheat and around 70 per cent of beef.[1, 2] Wheat comes from a wider range: 38.2 per cent from the United States, 29.9 per cent from Canada, 22.4 per cent from Uruguay and 9.5 per cent from Argentina.[9]
Geography makes up for this. None of Chile's protein or feed imports pass through Hormuz, Malacca, Suez or Bab el-Mandeb. Feed and beef arrive by road across the Andes or by short sea routes from the River Plate. Between 98 and 100 per cent of maize, soybean meal and beef comes from five neighbours: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.[9] Chile has also shown it can switch suppliers quickly. Paraguayan maize shipments rose from 8,524 tonnes in March to December 2024 to 908,600 tonnes in the same months of 2025, while Argentine volumes fell 40 per cent.[1] The remaining risk is that a drought or export curbs could hit Argentina and Paraguay at the same time.
Upstream dependence:
Feed is Chile's biggest dependence, and for land-based livestock it is almost total. Imports supply around 79 per cent of maize. Chile imported 1,075,230 tonnes of soybean meal in 2024 but only 85,881 tonnes of soybeans, because it has little crushing capacity, and bought another 302,290 tonnes of compound feed.[1, 9] Because so much is imported, world prices pass quickly to farm feed costs; shop prices have moved less.[1, 9]
All nitrogen and phosphate fertiliser is imported. In 2024 Chile bought 728,871 tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser, 517,502 tonnes of it urea, and 277,077 tonnes of other compound fertilisers, including 178,439 tonnes of MAP and 17,204 tonnes of DAP. With 66,271 tonnes of superphosphate, that came to 1.07 million tonnes, or 1.12 million including potash.[9, 28] ODEPA reports that all urea is imported, and trade data show no domestic production.[26, 28] Nitrogen comes from 37 countries, led by Brunei with 23.1 per cent, the United States 20.9, Russia 13.9, Malaysia 12.4 and China 8.4.[9] Superphosphate is more concentrated, 67.9 per cent from Morocco and 31.9 per cent from China, but it is the smallest of Chile's phosphate imports.[9] Potash is the reverse. Chile exported 502,200 tonnes of potash fertiliser and 418,977 tonnes of potassium nitrate in 2024 and imported only 50,898 tonnes, because SQM mines potash and nitrates in the Atacama.[9, 28]
Animal health is another weakness. Salmon farms used 217.4 tonnes of antibiotics in the first half of 2024, mostly against a bacterial disease called piscirickettsiosis.[25, 33] Farms in a programme to cut antibiotic use, covering 28.7 per cent of the harvest, used 18.92 grams per tonne of fish in 2024, against 302.33 grams per tonne across all sea farms.[34]
Chile exports more fishmeal than its own fish farms use. It shipped 252,945 tonnes in 2024 and imported 28,672 tonnes, and its potash and nitrate mines give farms some protection from import shocks.[9]
Access and affordability:
In 2024, 38.1 per cent of Chileans , down from 42.5 per cent in 2022 and 50.1 per cent in 2017.[36, 37] The cause is not a shortage of food: is 2.5 per cent.[38] Chile's unequal incomes leave many households unable to pay for a healthy diet.
Food prices have swung sharply. Food prices rose 24.7 per cent in the year to December 2022, twice the overall inflation rate of 12.8 per cent and the steepest rise of any spending category in Chile's worst inflation since 1991. Overall inflation fell back to 3.5 per cent by December 2025, as currency pressure eased and pandemic payments ended.[40, 41] Supermarkets and good roads reach most people, but there are gaps. Arica y Parinacota in the desert north and Magallanes in Patagonia have no traditional street markets, and small and Indigenous farmers lack cold stores and transport.[42, 43]
World price rises reached Chilean shoppers only in part: about 55 per cent of the 2021–22 rise in world food prices in pesos showed up in local food prices.[51, 52, 53] The peso fell 15.1 per cent against the dollar between 2021 and 2022, and food inflation peaked at 24.7 per cent in December 2022. The weak currency added to the rise but does not explain all of it.[51]
Prices did not come back down when world prices fell. Chile's food prices rose about 35.2 per cent between March 2022 and March 2026, while the FAO Food Price Index fell 19.7 per cent.[52, 53] Within a year, prices move less than in several neighbours. In 2025, retail pork in Santiago varied by 27.7 per cent, from a February low of CLP 5,040 a kilogram to an October high of CLP 6,437.[54] At the 2026 minimum wage of CLP 553,553 a month, a kilogram of pork at the late-August 2026 price of CLP 6,574 costs 2.16 hours of work on the 42-hour week now in force.[55, 54]
Shock endurance:
Chile can switch between foods in a shock, but its grain stocks are thin. Projected stocks of 180,000 tonnes of wheat and 130,000 tonnes of maize last about 27 and 15 days, and many farmers store grain in temporary silo bags.[1]
Chile can pay for imports. Reserves of USD 49.4 billion in 2025 cover around 5.5 months of the USD 108.7 billion of goods and services it imported, well above the usual three-month benchmark, and income per head is USD 17,995.[10, 44] Its two state savings funds, set up under a 2006 fiscal law, are thinner than the reserves suggest.[22] The main stabilisation fund held only USD 3,912.75 million at the end of January 2026, because withdrawals since 2007 have slightly exceeded the USD 27,763.41 million paid in.[35] Both S&P and Moody's confirmed Chile's rating with a stable outlook on 27 October 2025, at A and A2. S&P expects government debt to settle around 37 per cent of GDP through 2028, and Moody's expects it to stay below 45 per cent, so Chile can borrow on good terms.[45] Household support can scale up fast. An emergency payment in 2020 reached 3,229,838 households, 8,068,158 people or about 41 per cent of the population, within seven months of Chile's first COVID case.[46] The diet is broad enough that no single crop failure would leave people without food.[5]
Past shocks show both the risks and the recovery. The 2016 algal bloom killed around 12 per cent of a year's salmon output, over 40,000 tonnes of fish worth more than USD 800 million; an industry estimate puts the loss higher, at 39 million salmon and 100,000 tonnes.[12, 13] A later toxic bloom hit Chiloé, and the lost income sparked three weeks of protest.[13] Before that, a virus outbreak cut fish farm output from 881,084 tonnes in 2009 to 713,241 tonnes in 2010.[6] Chile also sits on one of the world's most active earthquake zones, and its salmon farms are in the fjords most exposed to it.
The industry has always bounced back. Fish farm output passed one million tonnes by 2012, two years after the 2010 low, and salmon exports earned USD 6.549 billion in 2025, up 3 per cent.[6, 16] Chile exports about 1.09 million tonnes of seafood and 200,163 tonnes of pork a year, while Chileans eat 14.4 kilograms of seafood each.[5, 9] Keeping some of those exports at home could cover domestic needs. Protein supply of 105.1 grams per person per day is about 80 per cent above what people need.
Trajectory
Three changes would help Chile most. The first is feed from new sources. Insect meal, single-cell protein, algae oils or more pulses and canola would all reduce reliance on imported feed. Today, pork and chicken, 69 kilograms of the average Chilean's yearly diet, depend on grain that one neighbour controls.[5] The second is where and how salmon are farmed. Good management of the jack mackerel stock protects the supply of fishmeal, but so long as farms are concentrated in Los Lagos and Aysén, a bloom like 2016 or an earthquake could still hit much of the industry at once.[24, 31, 33] The third is storage. With fifteen days of maize and no strategic reserve, Chile is exposed to any break in supply.[1]
Output is rising, but the risks have not fallen. Salmon harvests grew 14 per cent in 2025 and total fish landings and harvests 13 per cent.[3, 16, 24] The long drought has eased enough to lift crop yields,[1] and the jack mackerel stock remains healthy on the latest assessment.[31] Chile has built a productive protein system that still depends on imported feed and fertiliser.