Challenges in Food Security, Nutritional, and Social Public Policies for Venezuela: Rethinking the Future

Marianella Herrera-Cuenca,Maritza Landaeta Jimenez,Yaritza Sifontes

doi:10.3389/fsufs.2021.635981

Abstract

Food security in Venezuela presents signs of individual, family, community and national deterioration. The food and nutrition system has been weakened by the decrease in the production and the installation of parallel, irregular and insufficient distribution networks. Economic turmoil, political instability, hyperinflation, and poverty, the highest in recent history, limit the population's income and the access to quality food. The transition from capitalism to state-centered socialism has not been successful in ensuring enough foods for Venezuelans and the effect on the well-being of the population has been detrimental. This study proposes to design a public policy model based on the analysis of food security indicators, to generate an integrated framework of actions. The proposed model considers Dunn's classic public policy approach (2017) and the criteria of the Public Health Tools/Community Nutrition Program-Nutritional Care Process: Nutrition Care Process (NCP) of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 2012. The World Food Program survey on food security in Venezuela 2019, and the HumVenezuela.com 2020 platform were used. The integrated model includes two levels, one for bringing assistance to the most vulnerable and the other for strategic planning of structural, legal and institutional problems, and health and food safety gaps, in an ethical and moral framework that challenges corruption and promotes education and culture of peace. It is necessary for public policies to have parallel levels of actions to assist those most in need and to face long-term structural changes, which should begin as soon as possible, to ensure the correct path toward development.

Highlights

Venezuela’s current economic, political and social crisis is the most severe since its days of independence
Based on the matching between the factors that can impact nutrition, according to the Nutrition Care Process (NCP) and the variables established by the sources and the prioritization of the problematic situation, a set of variables were selected for the conceptualization and design of a public policy model to address food safety
The selected variables were included within the following categories: levels of food insecurity: marginal food security (MS), moderate food insecurity (MFI), and severe food insecurity (ISF), means of life, food consumption, and nutrition, as can be observed in Tables 1, 2

Summary

Introduction

Venezuela’s current economic, political and social crisis is the most severe since its days of independence. Shortages of agricultural inputs and fuel significantly affected yields, and these factors are not exclusive from the pandemic period, but emerged as significant problems in recent years (FAO, 2020) All this was hindered by the Government by creating parallel markets for the importation of food from Turkey, Iran, Nicaragua and more recently from Brazil and Mexico (CSIS Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2020; Transparencia Venezuela, 2020), to compete in an unfair way with the national production, which lacks the primary inputs (seeds, fertilizers, and agrochemicals). These actions do not consider the Venezuelan cultural food traditions and the preservation of specific characteristics of our food availability

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Conclusion