Building food security and resilience through intraregional trade in Latin America and the Caribbean

Intraregional agrifood trade in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) offers untapped opportunities for expansion. Comparative advantages in food production as well as variation in consumption patterns create a high degree of complementarity across many LAC countries. Making use of this variation to expand trade within the region could improve access to, availability, and diversity of food, as well as ensure more stable food supplies. Stable supplies are particularly important for food security given the likelihood of continued shocks, such as conflicts, epidemics, economic crises, and extreme weather events. Although trade between countries in the region plays an important role as a source of imports, more than 60 percent of LAC’s food purchases come from extraregional suppliers. However, the shares of intra- and extraregional imports vary by subregion. About 60 percent of South American food imports come from regional suppliers, but only 20 percent of Mexican and Central American imports come from LAC suppliers.