2 CHAPTER : AGRICULTURE IN EL SALVADOR
2.4 Market of Corn
2.4.4 Market price
According to data from the DGEA - MAG to 2006, the cost per quintal of corn technified was $ 8.67, per bushel of corn semi tech was $ 10.15 and the traditional quintal of corn was set at $12.40
2.4.2 Transformation Process
Corn can be used for human consumption or animal consumption, for human consumption, the grain is processed into flour, tortillas, tamales or other derivatives of the corn, these processing activities are in general process by artisans. In El Salvador, the use of derivatives of corn and flour packaged snacks shows a rising trend, though much of the population, including much of the urban area still depends on handmade tortillas.
2.4.3 Commercialization process
The main distribution of corn depends on the purpose of purchase, either for consumption or redistribution, are basically three: popular Market, supermarkets and through small producers. In the popular market traders do not have formal accounting records and there is no regulation on handling in the prices of these products, within this group is included the small local shops.
Importantly, the majority of the population has access to food in informal trading centers such as street markets or small producers (IICA, 2008).Gatherers of corn grain carriers work directly with the small producers, industry and wholesale distributors, the first gain direct grain field, to be delivered to the industry, the second obtain the processed grain to be placed in establishments where becomes a product for final consumer. As in the case of beans, the chain of distribution of corn is in the hands of few companies that know the local market and have the ability to influence market prices. El Salvador is the main exporter of corn in Central America.
2.4.4 Market price
An important indicator of the economy's ability to ensure food security of the population is the price of food. As can be seen in Table 9 from 1992 to 2010 the wholesale price of corn has increased considerably. Comparing the table of corn production with pricing table 9, with many of the increases in prices corresponds decreases in production. This result is
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logical and allows to show that a reduction in food production due to the effects of change Climate change could threaten food security not only from the dimension of food availability but also from the dimension of access.
Table 6 Average Price of Wholesaler for Corn
Year Price
As for the prices paid by final consumers, it behaves similar to wholesale prices in Table 9.
According to the average annual prices for consumers can get an estimate of what is the value of the basic food for one person in El Salvador. According to minimum food requirements, a person in El Salvador consumes approximately 247.10 pounds of corn a year and, multiplying these price data presented in Table 10, we obtain the average expense of corn in a year.
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Table 7 Annual Variation of Corn Price
Year Variation
The data described above suggests that the observed increase in production can apparently meet the food needs of the population, however, due to traditional production practices and poor soil conditions in which the crop grows, increasing constant volume of production seems to be not sustainable in the long run and could hardly contribute to position El Salvador as a net exporter of corn.
Moreover, the price level and the ability of the Salvadoran economy to generate revenues that offset, keep in constant risk the food security of many families, especially the poorest.
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3 CHAPTER 3: FOOD SECURITY IN EL SALVADOR
One of the most important components of Food Security is Availability which was used to be considered as a strictly production matter. If there was an adequate food production then availability was going to be satisfied in the market, but it was never considered that ecological factors will determine the long-term sustainability of food security systems.
As previously discussed, it is necessary to know the implications that climate change will have in the near future regarding agriculture. Since it is not been considered as a determining issue for the economic development of some countries, it is necessary to create awareness. In the case of most vulnerable, in this case Central America, agriculture is the key sector for the region.
According to this research, it is now the time to analyze the food security situation in one of these countries: El Salvador. More specifically, this chapter will focus on two dimensions of food security: food availability and food access.
To find out whether there is or not available food for the demanding population is necessary to review the main source of food that a country has: local agricultural production. Once the data is presented and analyzed, a comparison between supply and demand of food is done. To know the demand, it is used a similar approach to the basic food basket, meaning, the minimum amount of food needed by the population to meet their needs.
Finally, a review of the major climate events documented in El Salvador is done to determine whether there is an influence or not of climate change in food production and consequently on food security.
3.1 Dimensions of Food Security.
As noted in the first chapter, the concept of food security is multidimensional; it covers aspects such as food availability, access to food, food utilization and stability in the availability and access to food. The existence of multiple dimensions makes the rigorous study of food security exceed the scope of this research, however, from an economical
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point of view, two of the dimensions mentioned above are particularly important: Food availability and access to food.
Therefore, it is through these criteria that the analysis of food security in El Salvador will be approached. In addition to the definition established in the previous paragraph and because of the almost infinite amount of food found, it is necessary to introduce another concept or assumption to ease the study of food security and food availability; this is the concept of dietary patterns.
The dietary pattern is the set of commonly consumed food of most of the population, which provide the greatest amount of dietary energy (Hernandez, 2008). The dietary pattern depends on the region or country being studied; in the European cultures is wheat and corn in Mesoamerican cultures, for Asian cultures is rice, to name a few.
In the case of El Salvador, dietary pattern consists of several products mainly corn, rice and beans, which are the three most important ones even for the economy, but corn will be the focus of this study. By itself, it represents around fifty percent of caloric intake in the diet of Salvadoran people. (Hernandez, 2008)
The dietary pattern is a representative and valid instrument for the study of food security in a country for several reasons. First, these foods are eaten more often than the rest that make the basket. Second, they are consumed by the majority of the population, regardless of income level. And finally, they are not easily replaced, either by price or caloric intake in the diet of the population.
Therefore, from this point on, when referring to food security will be referring to the ability of the economy to ensure in a timely manner the availability and the economic access to the food pattern that the Salvadoran population depends on.
To start with the research, first it will be reviewed the state of food availability. That is, the existence of sufficient food of adequate quality (PESA, 2002). But according to the above, to quantify the availability of food is a complex exercise because it must include local food production, adding imports and subtracting exports.
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Also, it must be subtracted the amount of food that goes to animal consumption, for reserve (seed) and raw materials. This would be the accurate way to analyze the availability of food;
however, there are certain limitations in the Salvadoran reality to consider for a very thorough research.
Among these limitations are the limited availability of information and the quality of information available. Therefore, in the cases that it applies it will be quantified by the local production plus imports and the rest only by local production.
3.1.1 Food availability
Here is an overview of the system's capacity to produce corn. The stocks of this product are compared with the estimated demand and it is compared if whether or not there has been food security. In the following section there will be an attempt to determine if there has been some influence of the climate in the availability of food and what have been its consequences, to finally, infer on the capacity of the Climate Change to influence the future of food security in El Salvador.
3.1.1.1 The influence of Climate factors in food availability
Much has been discussed about the influence of climate on food production. Chapter 1 presented the views of the foremost authorities on policy design and the environment agreement that climate change will diminish the ability of some countries to produce food, thus decreasing the availability for them and putting at risk the food security of thousands of people.
But, How will climate change influence on agriculture in El Salvador? The answer to this question is still uncertain, in fact, there is only very few studies to date which attempts to predict the behavior of the agricultural sector to changes in the climate system. One of the most importat is The First National Communication on Climate Change published in 2000 by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN).
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The research by a panel of experts from the private sector and MARN establish that the increases in temperature and rainfall variations affect the ability of soils to fix nutrients, thereby affecting the growth capacity and productivity of plants (MARN, 2000). And it provides two likely scenarios that could arise in the country:
Table 8 ESTIMATIONS OF TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION VARIATIONS FOR THE YEARS OF 2020 AND 2100
VARIABLE
Scenario 1 Scenario 2
2020 2100 2020 2100
TEMPERATURE +1.1 +3.5 +1.1 +3.5
PRECIPITATION -11.3% -36.6% +3.5% +11.1%
Source: Ministry of Agriculture
As can be seen in Table 8 the projections were made for long terms, since in the short term precision in the estimations is lost due to the introduction of other variables. Moreover, the document states that because it is still unknown what would be the exact behavior of the climate, there may be two possible scenarios for agricultural production. If scenario 1 happens, there will be a decrease in performance between 10 and 20%, whereas if Scenario 2 happens, it is expected to increase in performance in no more than 10% (MARN , 2000).
Then, as stated in the previous paragraph, it is difficult to try to project what will be the effect of climate change on food availability in the short term. Therefore to check the influence of climate change in food production there will be use historical data of droughts and floods and will be compared with production data presented already in this document in order to identify if there is conformity with the expected behavior, that is, if loses are due to extreme weather events.
3.1.1.2 The impact of drought in Agriculture
Drought is one of the events that cause more losses in the agricultural sectors. There is no universal definition of drought as it depends on the location of each region, but overall
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drought means the absence of rainfall for an extended period that exceeds the parameters set as normal.
In El Salvador, there are no records of very prolonged droughts as in the case of countries like Africa; however, there is a significant level of incidence of this phenomenon in agriculture. Also, there is very little literature concerning the response of different crops to changes in temperature and precipitation.
These studies based on the incidence of dry spells during the rainy season, dog days, because are a marked reduction in the amount of rain accompanied by a increase in average temperature. The quantification of damage caused by the drought has been recorded only to severe drought, not when the phenomenon has been weak or moderate.
Popularly known as the dog days, take place between 14th of July and August 23rd and according to the decrease in ocean temperatures can produce partial or total decrease in rainfall and temperature increases. These events have major impact on domestic agriculture given that depending on the length of its duration can cause significant losses, especially for farmers less technified.
In Table 6 is presented the years that had records of droughts and heat waves and the effect on corn crops.
Table 9 Drought and its effect in Corn production Year with presence
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As it can be seen in Table 9 there has been major impact of drought in the corn crop. The largest decline occurred in the 1972/73 harvest, when production fell by more than 37%.
That year, the food gap went from 32 000 tons (approximately) to over 178 000 tons, meaning, an increase of 449% of the difference between what people demand and what is produced.
After the 1972 drought, there was no other one that affected as much the production of corn.
And while is true that the economy's ability to withstand drought conditions have improved, it must be remember that each time drought has had a different behavior and it is impossible to say which one is less severe than the last. For example, the drought that took place in 2004 resulted in losses of around 1%, however, the impact on people was evident, some farmers said: "There is no corn for tortillas, or (money) to buy rice and beans
"(Villarroel and Ventura, 2008).
Returning to Table 9, in recent years the drought losses have decreased, though the numbers of events have increased. So far in the beginning of the 21st century there have been 3 major droughts, the same ones that occurred throughout the nineties.
3.1.1.3 The impact of floods in crops
Another phenomenon that has a major impact on basic grain crops are floods caused by torrential rains. The effects of flooding are generally lower than those caused by drought;
however, there is tangible evidence of the losses caused by these phenomena. For example, according to a report of the ECLAC-UNDP, 2005, floods caused by Tropical Depression
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Stan caused the loss of more than 60,000 hectares of cultivated land, especially in corn crops.
Records from the National System of Territorial Studies (SNET), the Salvadoran territory has had at least one annual flooding in 38 of the 48 years between 1962 and 2010, also, on average, Salvadoran territory suffers at least 6 floods a year, being the most affected departments: San Salvador, La Libertad and La Paz. In Table 11 presents information on floods from 1962 to 2010.
In Table 11 have been omitted floods that occur in the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (AMSS) because there is little or no influence in the production of basic grains, such as corn. Knowing the behavior of floods is important, as to find if there is a relation with the presence of floods and the decrease in crop performance of corn.
Table 10 Events of Floods in El Salvador from 1962 until 2010
Source: National Service of Territorial Studies
Table 10 provides valuable information of the last decade; the floods have risen 50 percent from all the events that occurred in the reporting period, which means that El Salvador is becoming more vulnerable to this kind of phenomena. Moreover, in Table 8 presents the floods from 1962 to 2010 in each of the departments.
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Comparing to the information of price of Corn previously mentioned, is possible to see that the increases in price for the last years have a direct relation with the increase in floods that have stroke El Salvador.
Table 11 Floods in El Salvador by Department
Department Floods % department of San Salvador. After San Salvador, floods are distributed in a quasi-uniform way across the country, the area that border the coast, Usulután (7.92%), La Paz (6.37%) and San Vicente (6.37%). In addition, some departments with major storm flows as San Miguel and La Union have suffered 9.07 and 8.88 percent of the flooding respectively. In the figure 3 it can be seen the areas of El Salvador in the present and probably in the future that will be in a situation of greater vulnerability for floods.
The information provided also agrees with historical records of areas vulnerable to drought.
The coastal areas of the department of La Paz and San Vicente are some of the vulnerable because of its proximity to major water flows like the Lempa and Jiboa river.
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Once identified the vulnerable areas, it is necessary to try to understand the degree of the impact that floods have on crops. On the figure 3 shows geographical distribution of cultivated areas of corn in El Salvador. While the information in the figure is for the harvest of 2002/03, this results distribution is a good reference point for understanding in what degree it might be affected corn due to flooding. According to figure the yellow areas in the map are the ones where corn is produced. A glance shows that the five main producers of corns are Usulután, Santa Ana, Ahuachapán, La Libertad and San Miguel.
According to the Chamber of Agriculture and Agrobusiness in El Salvador (CAMAGRO), San Miguel and Usulután produced more than 24 percent of the 2002/03 harvest. However, if you compare with the information it can be seen that most of the areas devoted to corn in these departments are located in vulnerable areas to floods. That is, the presence of climate phenomena that generate floods, nearly a quarter of the corn crop could be at risk.
The presence and effects of erratic rainfall (deficit first excesses in season) are notorious, especially in those municipalities which have historically presented these irregularities. The impacts have involved about 85, 445 subsistence producers of basic grains in 136 townships, causing losses of 48 per percent in corn so far.
Even for other crops like sorghum and fruit trees have been hardest hit by the rains associated with Tropical Storms like "Agatha", creating in farmers an increased cost to take measures to prevent possible damage by fungi and bit.
There have been estimations of a 30 percent loss of newly planted corn, with the impact of the latest tropical storms, mainly in the east part of the country. Although there are large areas of eastern side of the country that remains flooded after levee break in the Rio Grande and Lempa. It is also estimated in a national study that for 2009 with the winter marked by irregular and deficient rainfall it caused losses close to $ 28 million.
The country's eastern coast and much of northern part in Santa Ana were particularly affected by lack of rainfall, sowing time, which affects the expected performance of crops.