Sep 24, 2026
3 min read
Making healthy diets more affordable and accessible worldwide will require coordinated action across agrifood systems and sustained investment in resilience, Guyana has told a UN forum on hunger and food security.
Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance Dr Ashni Singh made the call while addressing a High-Level Ministerial Dialogue at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, held under the theme "From Leaving the Hunger Map to Sustaining Progress in Latin America and the Caribbean." He is in New York accompanying President Irfaan Ali, who is leading a high-level delegation to the 81st Session of the UN General Assembly.
Singh used the platform to highlight measures that have helped Guyana reduce hunger and undernourishment to below 2.5 per cent, placing it among a small group of Latin American and Caribbean countries recognised for the achievement. "Guyana is proud to be one of those countries, and we congratulate all of the other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean – Brazil, Chile, and the Dominican Republic – who have achieved this major milestone," he said.
But the minister was quick to temper the moment, cautioning that progress globally remains uneven and fragile. An estimated 520 million people could still face hunger by 2030, he noted, leaving the world off track on the SDG 2 target of zero hunger — a picture he warned may worsen as El Niño conditions and geopolitical tensions disrupt agrifood systems. Wheat prices have climbed 15 per cent year-on-year, urea fertiliser prices are up 31.3 per cent, and diesel — a critical input to agricultural production — is trading more than 60 per cent higher than a year ago.
Against that backdrop, Singh set out the steps Guyana has taken to build resilience at home: diversifying agriculture, expanding transport infrastructure, and establishing a regional food hub with cold storage capability, alongside newer tools such as hydroponic and shade-house technology. To draw in private capital, the Government has removed corporate taxes on agricultural income, while nationwide farmers' markets and the National School Feeding Programme have been rolled out to ease price pressures and combat child malnutrition directly.
These interventions, Singh said, have translated into tangible economic gains as well, pointing to 156,000 new jobs created over the past five years as evidence of broad-based growth that has strengthened households' ability to meet basic nutritional needs. "These and other measures have helped to keep the incidence of hunger, undernourishment, and child malnutrition low over the last five years," he said.
