▲ Among the food improvements in Mexico is that more and more babies have exclusively breast milk.Photo Peláez
Daniel González Delgadillo
La Jornada newspaper
Monday, September 15, 2025, p. 12
In the six -year period of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, he advanced in food security goals with the strengthening of social programs, said Rubén Beltrán, an attached representative of the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) in Mexico.
In the report The state of food security and nutrition in the world 2025the international agency indicates that the prevalence of malnutrition in the country’s total population – with more than 130 million inhabitants – went from 4 percent between 2004 and 2006 – as Vicente Fox -, to 2.7 percent in the last two years of the administration of López Obrador.
He also points out that the incidence of severe food insecurity decreased from 3.4 percent in two years of the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2014-2016) to 2.9 between 2022 and 2024.
It also indicates that moderate or severe food insecurity in the total population fell from 24.9 percent between 2014 and 2016 to 19.3 with López Obrador (2022-2024).
FAO’s report warns that, on the contrary, adult obesity rose from 29.3 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2022; Anemia in women grew from 10.2 percent to 13.2 percent and exclusive breastfeeding to newborns went from 14.4 percent in 2012 to 35.9 in 2023.
Rubén Beltrán stressed that FAO currently works very closely with the Mexican government to advance in the goals of the sustainable development objectives, especially in the eradication of hunger. Although it is not yet known if Mexico will fully comply with the zero hunger goal by 2030, the specialist stressed that with well -being policies the country has advanced accelerated.
Impulse to agricultural women
He argued that the governments of the fourth transformation have defined objectives, in addition to continuing to strengthen social programs, among which he mentioned the improvement of rural development and the impulse to agricultural women.
He explained that they promote projects to give access to food, financing, fertilizers and better technologies, in order to strengthen the resilience of the Mexican countryside.
In the same way, he added, they promote food production, such as corn or meat for domestic consumption at a national scale, which, it will help reduce famine in a shorter time, especially because of the preponderance given to the less favored areas of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán, among others.
On another issue, FAO appointed the ancestral agricultural system of Metepantle, in the mountainous areas of Tlaxcala, as an important system of the world agricultural heritage (SIPAM), which places Mexico as a regional reference in sustainability of the field.
To date, he has designated 102 Sipam in 29 countries, and in Méxi-CO he has cataloged the Chinampa, in Xochimilco, and La Milpa MA-YA, in Yucatan.
