The Protein Sovereignty Index

Country assessment

Peru

We assess Peru as Exposed (59.6). Peru supplies about 91 per cent of the animal protein its people eat and lands one of the largest single-species catches on earth, yet the industrial engine of that domestic supply, a 1.9 million tonne broiler sector, depends on roughly 4.6 million tonnes of imported Argentine maize, 2.1 million tonnes of imported soybean meal and fertiliser nutrients Peru does not manufacture in any quantity.[1][5][11]

The binding constraint is upstream dependence rather than import volume. Peru manufactures and exports the world's most concentrated feed protein while importing almost all of the bulk feed that actually feeds Peruvians.

About a third of Peruvians cannot afford a nutritionally adequate diet even though national nutrition outcomes look moderate, and deep foreign-exchange reserves have repeatedly failed to convert into a social safety net that holds through a shock.

The protein system

Peru's protein system splits into two economies that barely touch. The first is a domestic food economy of 34.6 million people[16] consuming 88.6 grams of protein per head per day in 2023, of which 43.3 grams is animal in origin and 45.2 grams plant,[12] at a dietary energy supply of 123 per cent of requirement.[10] Poultry dominates: broiler placements reached 837 million birds in 2025, chicken meat production 1.9 million tonnes, and per capita consumption 56 kilogrammes a year, among the highest in Latin America.[1] Alongside that, 28 million layers produced 512,000 tonnes of eggs,[1] rice supplied 74 kilogrammes per head from 2.7 million tonnes of largely domestic milled output, potatoes 115 kilogrammes, and wheat 67 kilogrammes almost entirely from imports.[1]

The second economy is a wild-capture export industry. Peru landed 5.76 million tonnes of wild fish in 2024,[14] made 6.6 per cent of world marine captures in 2022,[7] and produced 1.03 million tonnes of fishmeal in marketing year 2025, of which it consumed 15,000 tonnes and exported the rest.[5] Anchoveta accounts for 77 per cent of landings by volume[6] and has been the largest single marine species catch in the world since before 2010, at almost 4.9 million tonnes globally in 2022 against a 2018 peak above 7.0 million tonnes.[7] Fishmeal is normally Peru's fourth largest export by value, worth USD 1.8 billion in both 2021 and 2022,[2][3] and China took 79 per cent of it in 2023.[2] The asymmetry is stark: 6,678 thousand tonnes of fish and seafood produced against 966 thousand tonnes entering domestic supply in 2023.[9]

That asymmetry governs how Peru should be scored. When the anchoveta fails, Peru loses export earnings and coastal employment. It does not lose dinner.

Durable domestic capacity: 65

Quantitative score 68, adjusted down 3 points

Our calculation from FAO Food Balance Sheets puts Peru's total protein self-sufficiency at 78.6 per cent for 2023 and animal protein self-sufficiency at 91.1 per cent.[9] Chicken meat runs at 95 per cent of consumption, eggs at 100 per cent, beef at about 97 per cent (202,092 tonnes produced against 6,780 tonnes imported in 2024),[5][26] and rice at 94 per cent.[1] Milk is the weakest animal category at 66 per cent, on national output of about 2.2 million tonnes,[9][27] and wheat is 92 per cent imported against 220,000 tonnes of domestic soft wheat unsuitable for milling.[1]

Two qualifications temper it. First, most of this capacity is conversion rather than production: Peru's poultry and egg sector is a grain-processing industry that happens to sit on the Pacific coast, and it would stop within weeks of a feed interruption. Second, the resource base carrying the tonnage is a climate-cyclical wild stock, and Peru holds only 0.116 hectares of arable land per person.[16] Set against those, Peru's fisheries governance is genuinely strong: the OECD's March 2026 accession review finds 97 per cent of Peru's 30 assessed stocks above biological sustainability limits and 73 per cent at levels allowing productivity to be maximised, against OECD averages of 64 and 32 per cent.[6] FAO likewise assesses the anchoveta stock as within biologically sustainable levels.[8] We therefore apply a downward adjustment of only 3 points.

Distribution remains a separate and unresolved problem. Undernourishment is low at 6.9 per cent and stunting at 11.5 per cent,[10][16] yet 33.6 per cent of the population was moderately or severely food insecure across 2023 to 2025.[10] Peru's protein problem is one of purchasing power more than availability.

Resource headroom: 56

Quantitative score 54, adjusted up 2 points

Peru's flagship resource has no room to grow, and the 2026 season has made that explicit. The OECD classifies 76 per cent of Peru's assessed marine stocks as fully exploited, a status under which no expansion of effort is permitted and new capacity must replace retired capacity.[6] The north-central anchoveta stock is managed to a biomass floor of 5 million tonnes and a maximum exploitation rate of 0.35, within a biomass that has ranged between 6 and 11 million tonnes.[6] PRODUCE set the first 2026 north-central quota at 1,914,049 tonnes, a 36 per cent cut from the 3 million tonnes allowed a year earlier and the lowest in a decade.[20][23] IFFO calculated that quota as 27 per cent of estimated biomass, and put the underlying estimate 35 per cent below the March 2025 survey and about 17 per cent below the 1996 to 2025 average for January-to-March surveys.[19]

On land, national renewable freshwater of 49,021 cubic metres per person per year[16] conceals a distributional problem, since most irrigated production and most of the population sit on the arid Pacific side of the Andes. Aquaculture, the conventional growth route for a fishing nation, produced only 117,620 tonnes in 2024 and remains smaller than in 2021.[15]

Testing the land side of headroom against FAOSTAT's land-use and agricultural credit series confirms rather than overturns that picture. Irrigation-equipped area rose 28 per cent between 2000 and 2024, from 2.01 to 2.58 million hectares, but the series has been carried flat since 2012 for lack of a newer national census; the resulting 66 per cent of arable land under irrigation, cross-checked against AQUASTAT's 1994 census baseline, is a mostly built stock rather than a live growth margin.[38][40] Arable land itself fell 6 per cent in absolute terms and 27 per cent per person between 2000 and 2024 against 29 per cent population growth; cropland, the broader measure that includes permanent crops, grew 21 per cent in absolute terms but still fell 6 per cent per person, the same population-weighted erosion found across most of South America.[38] Agricultural credit is measurable but underweight: FAOSTAT's orientation index for Peru, last updated in 2015, peaked at 0.68 in 2012 and closed at 0.54, below Guyana, Uruguay and Ecuador's more recent readings, though Agrobanco, the state agricultural bank, still disbursed 910 million soles to more than 70,000 producers in 2023.[39][41] Documented outcomes of flagship irrigation schemes split cleanly. Olmos delivered more than 22,000 of a planned 43,500 hectares and generated an estimated USD 1 billion in Lambayeque agricultural exports in 2024, 90 per cent of the region's total.[42] Chavimochic III, 63,000 new hectares planned, sat paralysed from 2016 after the state failed to deliver land to its concessionaire; the contract was dissolved by arbitration in October 2022, and Peru has since re-tendered the project to Canada for a 2025 restart.[43][44][45][46] Majes Siguas II, 38,500 hectares planned, has executed 11 per cent of its works in 14 years, and its concessionaire filed a USD 1.4 billion claim against the Peruvian state at ICSID in October 2024.[47][48][49] Real, delivered capacity exists; a larger volume of announced capacity, more than twice Olmos's own scale, has not been delivered in a decade.

We adjust upward by 2 points for the resource-lightness of the Peruvian diet. Ruminants supply just 19.5 per cent of animal protein,[9] the balance coming from poultry, eggs and wild-caught fish, and the feed-intensive part of that footprint draws on Argentine and Bolivian land. The adjustment is deliberately small, because exporting a resource requirement is not equivalent to possessing headroom.

Import exposure: 68

Quantitative score 64, adjusted up 4 points

This is Peru's strongest pillar and the one most often misread. In protein terms Peru imports only about 21.4 per cent of supply[9] and exports a very large marine surplus. The exposure is commodity-specific: the cereal import dependency ratio is 52 per cent,[10] maize covers 73 per cent of consumption from imports,[1] and soybean meal is imported in full.[5]

Supplier concentration is severe on paper. Argentina supplied close to 100 per cent of Peru's maize imports in 2025 at an average c.i.f. price of USD 209 per tonne, and Canada held 80 per cent of the wheat market with Argentina at 11 and the United States at 8 per cent.[1] Rice imports split between Uruguay at 49 per cent and Brazil at 41 per cent.[1] The one genuine chokepoint is the Panama Canal, through which Atlantic-origin Argentine and Brazilian cargoes reach Callao and Paita, with the Cape Horn route as the costly alternative.

We adjust upward by 4 points because the concentration figures overstate the structural risk. Maize, wheat and rice all enter duty-free from every origin, United States maize is additionally exempt from the Peruvian Price Band under the 2009 trade promotion agreement, and Peru holds 21 free trade agreements with trading relationships spanning more than 200 countries.[1][4] Argentina's share reflects freight and price advantage rather than an absence of alternatives, and Peru's largest single staple supplier, Canada, ships on a Pacific route with no chokepoint at all.

Upstream dependence: 42

Quantitative score 36, adjusted up 6 points

This is the binding constraint. Peru's animal protein sector consumes about 5.65 million tonnes of maize as feed, 4.63 million tonnes of it imported, and 2.125 million tonnes of soybean meal, all of it imported against domestic production of at most 2,000 tonnes.[1][5] FAOSTAT records zero domestic production of nitrogen, phosphate and potash fertiliser nutrients in every reported year, against 2023 imports of 373,565 tonnes of nitrogen, 92,296 tonnes of phosphate and 103,653 tonnes of potash,[11] and Peru appears among neither the world's ammonia[18] nor its potash producers.[28] Nitrogen application is thin at 35.85 kilogrammes per hectare of cropland,[11] which limits the yield damage a supply failure can do while confirming that Peruvian yields are already input-constrained. The moratorium on genetically engineered crops, extended in January 2021 to 31 December 2035, caps what domestic maize can contribute.[1]

The 2022 shock showed what this dependence costs. Urea imports fell 58 per cent against the seven-year average, and China had been the single largest urea source at 87,000 tonnes or 26.7 per cent of imports, alongside 48.7 per cent of ammonium sulphate and 41.1 per cent of ammonium phosphate purchases.[24]

We adjust upward by 6 points for two inputs Peru physically owns. It mined 4.8 million tonnes of phosphate rock in 2025 against reserves of 210 million tonnes and supplies more than 99 per cent of United States phosphate rock imports,[17] so the phosphorus base is domestic even though finished fertiliser is bought abroad. And it operates 124 licensed reduction plants producing roughly a million tonnes a year of fishmeal at 62 to 67 per cent protein while consuming 15,000 tonnes of it.[2][5] No other country holds an owned feed-protein capability of that scale.

Access and affordability: 58

Quantitative score 58, no adjustment applied

Peru's affordability profile splits between a weak distributional measure and moderate outcome indicators. The FAO/World Bank Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet series puts 35.8 per cent of Peruvians unable to afford a nutritionally adequate diet in 2024, within the same mid-30s range recorded every year from 2021 to 2023 and well below the 45.9 per cent pandemic peak of 2020.[29] Against that, prevalence of undernourishment is comparatively moderate at 6.9 per cent for 2023 on the World Bank's SOFI-sourced series.[30] Child stunting is 11.5 per cent for 2023;[16] the Global Nutrition Report's Peru profile carries 11.4 per cent, a figure the profile leaves undated and one that matches the World Bank's own 2020 observation for Peru, so we treat it as the same survey lineage at an earlier vintage rather than as independent corroboration.[33] Both outcome measures sit far from the global floor and equally far from crisis levels: a diet calorically adequate for most Peruvians yet nutritionally incomplete for the bottom of the income distribution. At 35.8 per cent, the indicators put the pillar at 58.

Price volatility has been real but transitory. Headline inflation reached 8.33 per cent in 2022, a 24-year high coinciding with the fertiliser and food-price shock covered under upstream dependence and shock endurance,[25][31] before falling to 6.46 per cent in 2023 and 2.01 per cent in 2024.[31] The price-volatility proxy is the headline series together with Trading Economics' food-inflation tracker (3.32 per cent, June 2026, against a 5.88 per cent long-run average since 1993).[32]

Physical access is the thinnest-evidenced component. National poverty at the USD 8.30 per day (2021 PPP) line stood at 36.2 per cent in 2024,[34] and the World Food Programme, which runs resilience and supply-chain programming in Peru,[35] reports difficult access to markets across the Amazon basin and has launched rainfall-index insurance there with UNEP and UNDRR in four Peruvian districts alongside Bolivia's Pando department.[37] That WFP reporting is regional in scope and illustrated mostly from Colombian and Bolivian cases, so it evidences the constraint without sizing it for Peru. This component is scored on the national poverty line and the qualitative WFP evidence, not on sub-national disaggregation. No adjustment applies: no admissible ground is specific to affordability, and the quantitative indicators already capture the distributional problem this pillar weights most heavily.

Shock endurance: 61

Quantitative score 59, adjusted up 2 points

Peru can pay, can substitute, and has repeatedly failed to organise. Reserves of USD 90.4 billion in 2025 cover 10.4 months of imports,[16] an unusually deep buffer for a middle-income economy, and the diet is exceptionally broad, spanning potatoes, rice, wheat, poultry, eggs and 25.9 kilogrammes of fish and seafood per person a year.[1][13] Set against that, there is no strategic grain reserve at all, rice stocks sit at private mills with no government control or oversight, and wheat and maize carry-out stocks amount to roughly three weeks of consumption each.[1]

The two most recent shocks point in opposite directions. The 2023 El Nino cut capture fisheries production 34.4 per cent, from 5.37 to 3.52 million tonnes, after PRODUCE cancelled the first north-central season outright and the second southern season with it, at a cost to the fishmeal industry of about USD 1 billion.[2][14] Domestic protein supply fell 2.0 per cent.[12] The 2022 price and fertiliser shock left 16.6 million Peruvians without regular access to safe and nutritious food, with inflation above 8 per cent at a 24-year high.[25] FAO described that as more than half the population; against the World Bank's 2022 population estimate of 33.5 million it is 49.6 per cent,[16] approaching half rather than exceeding it. The fishery collapse hurt the balance of payments; the price shock hurt people.

Crisis purchasing power is the most internally divided part of this pillar. Peru holds investment-grade sovereign ratings, Moody's Baa1 and S&P BBB-, both stable as of 2024,[36] which keep market access open for outbidding on world grain and fertiliser markets under stress, and its reserve cover of 10.4 months is genuinely strong for a middle-income economy.[16] Social protection that can scale is the weak link: despite existing cash-transfer programmes, the 2022 shock still left 16.6 million people without regular food access,[25] showing that fiscal firepower has not yet converted into a safety net that holds households through a crisis. This component lifts the score by a couple of points rather than more; the reserves and market access are real strengths, but weak social-protection delivery caps the credit we give it.

Our net adjustment remains a modest 2 points upward, on unchanged grounds. The credit is for a substitution route the indicators miss: redirecting the fishmeal stream inward would supply roughly 660,000 tonnes of feed protein against a total national protein supply of about 1.12 million tonnes a year, using plants that already exist. The debit is for demonstrated delivery failure, the absence of any reserve, and a policy environment in which aquaculture output fell 25.4 per cent in 2023 and foreign direct investment fell more than 60 per cent between 2022 and 2023 amid political instability.[4]

Trajectory

Three developments would strengthen Peru's position. The first is fishery science holding the line under a warming Pacific. The 2026 coastal El Nino alert has been in force since February, warm conditions are projected to persist to February 2027, and fishing was suspended on 12 May after landings of 453,000 tonnes, or 24 per cent of the quota, then extended to at least 10 June on juvenile presence.[21][22] Peru's adaptive management system, which the OECD describes as near real-time and well suited to climate change,[6] is the reason we score capacity as high as 65, and its erosion would be the most damaging single change available.

The second is feed. Peru has natural gas, phosphate rock and a fishmeal industry, and has converted none of the first two into domestic feed or fertiliser manufacturing. A urea plant, a domestic crush, or a policy reserving a share of fishmeal for domestic feed would each substantially reduce upstream dependence. Ending the biotechnology moratorium before 2035 would raise maize yields from 5.12 tonnes per hectare[1] and shrink the import bill.

The third is reserves and delivery. Peru holds ten months of import cover in hard currency and three weeks of grain. A funded strategic reserve, or even public visibility of private stocks, would convert fiscal strength into physical endurance. Until then Peru will continue to look sovereign in the aggregate and fragile in the shock.

Sources

  1. Grain and Feed Annual, Peru (PE2026-0003) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  2. Oilseeds and Products Annual, Peru (PE2024-0003) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2024)
  3. Oilseeds and Products Annual, Peru (PE2023-0005) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2023)
  4. Peruvian Seafood and Aquaculture Industry Observations and Analysis (PE2024-0011) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  5. Production, Supply and Distribution database (oilseeds, grains, livestock and poultry) · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026 (July 2026 release; livestock April 2026))
  6. Policies for the Future of Fisheries and Aquaculture in Peru, chapter 3: Fisheries management in Peru · OECD (2026)
  7. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024: Capture fisheries production · FAO (2024)
  8. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024: The status of fishery resources · FAO (2024)
  9. Food Balance Sheets (Americas data, 2010-2023) · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 2023))
  10. Suite of Food Security Indicators · FAOSTAT (2026)
  11. Fertilizers by Nutrient · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 2023))
  12. Daily protein supply from animal and plant-based foods · Our World in Data (FAO Food Balance Sheets) (2026 (data 2023))
  13. Fish and seafood consumption per capita · Our World in Data (FAO Food Balance Sheets) (2026 (data 2023))
  14. Capture fishery production · Our World in Data (FAO FishStat) (2026 (data 2024))
  15. Aquaculture production · Our World in Data (FAO FishStat) (2026 (data 2024))
  16. World Development Indicators (reserves, GDP per capita, population, arable land, freshwater, poverty, stunting) · World Bank (2026)
  17. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Phosphate Rock · US Geological Survey (2026)
  18. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Nitrogen (Fixed)-Ammonia · US Geological Survey (2026)
  19. Feed: fishmeal and fish oil production fell in Q1 2026 (IFFO market data) · Fish Farming Expert (2026)
  20. Peru cuts anchovy quota by 36% to 1.91 million tonnes amid sustainability concerns · Feed Business Middle East & Africa (2026)
  21. Peru Anchovy Fishing Suspension Extended to June 10, 2026 Due to Coastal El Nino and Juvenile Catch · IndexBox (2026)
  22. Warm sea conditions force a new temporary suspension of anchovy fishing in Peru · WeAreAquaculture (2026)
  23. Peru launches first North-Central anchovy season of 2026 with decreased TAC of 1.9 million tons · SeafoodSource (2026)
  24. Peru struggles to meet fertiliser demand as global crisis takes hold · Dialogue Earth (Dialogo Chino) (2022)
  25. Peru's food crisis grows amid soaring prices and poverty: FAO · UN News (2022)
  26. Produccion de carne de res de Peru alcanzo las 202.092 toneladas en 2024 · Agraria.pe (2025)
  27. Produccion de leche alcanzo las 2,2 millones de toneladas (MIDAGRI figures) · Indice.pe (2025)
  28. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Potash · US Geological Survey (2026)
  29. Share of population that cannot afford a healthy diet, Peru, derived series based on FAO/World Bank Food Prices for Nutrition CoAHD data · Our World in Data (2026 (data 2017-2024))
  30. World Development Indicators, Peru, prevalence of undernourishment (SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS), sourced from FAO SOFI · World Bank (2026)
  31. World Development Indicators, Peru, inflation, consumer prices, annual (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG) · World Bank (2026)
  32. Peru Food Inflation · Trading Economics (based on INEI data) (2026)
  33. Peru country nutrition profile · Global Nutrition Report (2026)
  34. Peru country overview (poverty at USD 8.30/day, 2021 PPP) · World Bank (2026)
  35. Peru country page (food security and Amazon access programming) · World Food Programme (2025)
  36. Peru Credit Rating (Moody's, S&P) · Trading Economics (2026)
  37. Pathways to food security in the Amazon (rainfall-index insurance in four Peruvian districts; market-access constraints) · World Food Programme (2025 (12 November))
  38. Inputs: Land Use, Peru (Arable land, Cropland, Land area equipped for irrigation), data · FAOSTAT (2026 (data 1961-2024))
  39. Investment: Credit to Agriculture, Peru, data · FAOSTAT (2026 (data checked 2001-2024, Peru series 2008-2015))
  40. AQUASTAT country profile, Peru (irrigation geospatial and census data) · FAO AQUASTAT (2026 (1994 census data))
  41. Agrobanco hizo entrega de mas de S/ 910 millones en creditos durante el 2023 · Infobae / Agrobanco (2023)
  42. Exportacion agricola como consecuencia del Proyecto Olmos representa el 90% de agroexportaciones de Lambayeque · Agraria.pe (2025)
  43. Chavimochic: esto es lo que costaran las hectareas que incorporara el proyecto · Gestion (2024)
  44. Canada gana licitacion de Chavimochic III: como beneficia el proyecto de irrigacion al norte peruano y cuando estara listo · Infobae (2024)
  45. Chavimochic III: que dice la resolucion que termino con el contrato de concesion · RPP Noticias (2022)
  46. CHAVIMOCHIC III: Gobierno Regional, MIDAGRI y Canada afinan detalles para reinicio de megaproyecto este 2025 · Proyectos Trujillo (2025)
  47. MEF: se destraba proyecto Majes Siguas II que irrigara 38,500 hectareas · Andina (Agencia Peruana de Noticias) (2019)
  48. Majes Siguas II: Cobra lleva al Estado peruano a un arbitraje internacional ante CIADI por US$1.400 millones · Infobae (2024)
  49. Ejecutivo insiste con Majes Siguas II mientras comunidades afectadas no son compensadas · Ojo Publico (2024)
  50. World Development Indicators, Peru, population, total (SP.POP.TOTL) · World Bank (2026)

What we could not measure

No FAO-published protein self-sufficiency ratio exists for Peru, so the 78.6 per cent total and 91.1 per cent animal figures here are our own calculation from food balance data. Food insecurity estimates conflict sharply: the official reading is 33.6 per cent for 2023-2025, while other reporting puts it above 50 per cent. Fishmeal export earnings have no verified figure since 2023 (USD 926 million), and no food-specific price index exists for the 2022 shock, so we relied on headline inflation as a weaker proxy.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced