The agriculture sector stands as the top source of income for the poor in Honduras, providing employment and opportunities for economic growth. Feed the Future provides assistance to poor Honduran households to increase their incomes by moving away from subsistence farming to market-driven production systems in high-value crops, improving animal production systems, diversifying income sources, improving access to credit, and expanding off-farm microenterprise opportunities.
Feed the Future helped 21,817 families living in poverty increase their incomes from an average of $0.90 person per day to $1.38 person per day in 2016. Nearly 5,000 households — or 25,000 people — rose above the extreme poverty line ($1.25 a day).
Feed the Future increasingly worked on issues of governance, natural resource management, and dialogue with indigenous communities to ensure long-term viability of irrigation and other uses of water. In 2016, Feed the Future and the Government of Honduras helped more than 5,000 farmers access irrigation.
The Government of Honduras’ ministries and local governments are adopting a planning tool developed by Feed the Future to better allocate scarce water resources between competing uses. The Government of Honduras and other donors in under the Alliance for the Dry Corridor Initiative in Honduras are replicating Feed the Future’s market-oriented approach to agriculture.
These results reflect information from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Treasury (through the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program), reported into Feed the Future’s central monitoring system for fiscal year 2016 (FY16). Impact data for poverty and stunting statistics comes from a 2015 population-based survey by the International Food Policy Research Institute. All dollar amounts are listed in U.S. dollars.
Honduras has experienced a moderate recovery since the 2008-2009 global economic downturn. Despite this encouraging trend, economic gains over the past several years have largely favored the middle and upper classes, leading to greater income disparity in the country. Poverty and undernutrition continue to limit many Hondurans from leading more productive lives, therefore hampering the development of the next generation. More than 63.8 percent of Hondurans live below the national poverty line and are without access to basic services such as clean water, energy and infrastructure (just over 20 percent of the roads in Honduras are paved). The lack of basic services exacerbates poor health and sanitation, particularly in rural areas, where some 60 percent of Honduras’ extreme poor reside. Twenty-five percent of children are stunted in rural western Honduras, where Feed the Future works.
The agriculture sector stands as the top source of income for the poor in Honduras, providing employment and opportunities for economic growth. Yet, Honduras is also one of the most vulnerable countries to climate shocks, which exacerbate poverty and food insecurity and make agriculture more difficult as some areas become warmer and rain patterns become more erratic, altering production and market patterns.
Feed the Future provides assistance to poor Honduran households to increase their incomes by moving away from subsistence farming to market-driven production systems in high-value crops, improving animal production systems, diversifying income sources, improving access to credit, and expanding off-farm microenterprise opportunities. Health and nutrition interventions are strengthening community health centers and volunteer services, with a focus on children under five years of age, and improving household diets, child feeding practices, and household hygiene.
Feed the Future introduces adaptive agricultural practices to improve crop and household resilience. Feed the Future also ensures that both women and men benefit from new opportunities by supporting post-production jobs and enterprises, which are ideal opportunities for rural women
Feed the Future supports the following programs, partnerships and organizations in Honduras.
For Salomon and other Honduran farmers, access to production technology and crop protection products has been a game-changer. By better managing their crops and protecting against pests, farmers are increasing yields and creating jobs for their communities through better market demand for produce.
Read MoreFeed the Future introduces agricultural practices and technologies to growers in western Honduras that provide adaptation measures to ensure sustainable agricultural growth.
Read MoreImproving nutrition, particularly for mothers and young children, is one of Feed the Future’s highest-level goals. In Honduras, some important breakthroughs in nutrition programming are paving the way toward better health and nourishment for some of the country’s most vulnerable children.
Read MoreFeed the Future and Lutheran World Relief are working together with ten municipalities in Western Honduras on a project to help women and men to advocate for policy changes that enhance women’s access to credit and respond to their needs in agriculture.
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